h1bpositive

Slabotomy Step of Hope Charity Gig, February 23, 2012

2012-01-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

We're not riding for Martin - we're playing for Martin!

On February 23, 2012, a group of friends and bands from Lonely Planet are getting together at the Espy hotel in St Kilda to raise money for our colleague Martin Heng's charity, helping fund his amazing rehab program that we all hope will get him walking again after a diabolical bike accident in 2011.

We made up a bunch of collecter's edition posters for the event, which kicks off at 8:30pm, and will only cost you a $10 donation to Step of Hope to get you in.

You can download the poster of your choice in a chunky jpeg here from Flickr.

Dan Moore, versatile musician and singer has played with Slabotomy before, but has struck out on his own with an EP launch imminent in 2012. Former Slabotomy drummer Josh Geoghegan has formed a new band called Dirty Little West which promises monster rhythms if nothing else.

Spread the word!

Memories of Lonely Planet's Last Blastoff Charity Gig July 1, 2011

2011-07-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

Flip Video is never going to give you a rock event experience- the picture is impossibly grainy, it is hand held and shaky, and the sound is awful - with a bizarre bias to recording the laughter and clinking glasses around you over the 100dB+ of stage generated music.

It is really just to give you a glimpse of the ghost of a concert past, something to excite the synapses of your own memory and fire them off. Or to imagine the possibilities.

Photographs are much better records from this type of event - here you get the artist telling a story, seeing things that others didn't, and enabling anyone to hear those stories (in the ultimate of ironies) with their eyes and imagination, even though it is primarily a story of deafening walls of sound.

Luckily photographs can be deafening to your senses as well.

Share them round!

Update on gig: Speed Orange and Slabotomy raised over $2800 for the Peter Mac Foundation in memory of our friend and colleague Richard Samson. A record 300 people were at the charity gig, filling the John Curtin Bandroom to the brim.

The Flip video collection:

Walk this Way: http://youtu.be/0W-v2dmEYCA

Hate to Say I told you So: http://youtu.be/_3Pp-zn1vV8

Debaser: http://youtu.be/IPRxCXvGHmc

All these things that I have done: http://youtu.be/bnQmhviok38

Sweet Dreams & 7 Nations: http://youtu.be/FOP5ZWV0F_Y

The Writings on the Wall: http://youtu.be/lojAw5wFTE4

Bad Romance: http://youtu.be/jPTyOo9jSpk

Proud Mary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clbjOdFFfXk

Paranoid: http://youtu.be/HbwKONhshos

My hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoOYXKAhQ8s

Zombie: http://youtu.be/i6LDi04lWl8

Mark Broadhead's Photographs are here on Facebook.

James Pierce's Magic Leica Photographs:

Lonely Planet Band - This Lovely Planet Gig, July 1, 2011

2011-06-01T04:32:00.000-07:00

When you live in Melbourne, Winter brings cold mornings, long nights and an infinite amount of AFL football on your TV screen. But it brings good things too - and the annual Winter Charity gig for the Lonely Planet band and friends Speed Orange is a very good thing.

This season our charity is the Peter Mac Cancer Research foundation - in honour of their care for our friend and colleague Richard Samson, a tireless band supporter who lost his battle with cancer early in 2011. There'll be a little bit of Pixies just for him.

We'll also be saying goodbye to some long-time band members who have left the company amidst the move of our website business to London:

Vivek Wagle, Website editor, the former band manager, a lead guitarist, arranger and singer of punk and power-rock alike is heading back the USA with the band member he married Janet B.A small part of Vivek will remain with us in Australia, as he has left his beautiful 1984 BC Rich Mockingbird in mine and Noah's care.

Dave Burnett, singer and guitarist, unequalled fan of the Beatles and all things British in music is seeking new shores in Melbourne to practise his content technology wizardry. His heartfelt version of London Calling when the BBCW bought us is still talked about today.

Songstress Katie Marcar (my favourite was her brilliant job on The Grates 19-20-20) is going to practice her web-mastery somewhere in Melbourne. Her harmonies are going to be missed, but she has whipped up some magic to go out on.

Tony Jackson, lead singer, composer and musician for both Lonely Planet TV and his amazing band Speed Orange will be practising his creative crafts in Australia somewhere - Melbourne hopes to keep him!

Ryan Sweeney, who regularly opened for Slabotomy with his band Roostar will be missed by LP and the Slabotomy crew for his powerful lyrics, great guitar riffs and that harmonica.

Maureen Wheeler, our patron and founder of the original LP band has of course gone beyond the Lonely Planet - we missed the chance to honour her and Tony when they sold their shares, so this gig is for them too. A little something special to toast them is planned (clue: see the gig name).

And of course, I'm taking my Stratocaster and busking for work somewhere in Melbourne too.

Slabotomy, as the outworking of a very creative community of musicians at Lonely Planet, has a special Dr Who quality, in that it has regenerated many times over the last 2 decades, but this is definitely the last show with this lineup.

Expect fireworks. 4 sets from 8pm to midnight.

That amazing poster is the work of David, Bruce, Will and the team at R+R in New Zealand, who have once again given their genius to our cause and made something extra special for the last blast-off gig.

Inspirational Guitar Movie Moments - a list.

2010-12-11T00:50:00.000-08:00

Guitars probably look pretty much alike to the average person. Pointy bit, sticky bit, chunk you strap on and strum. But in the world of the apprentice guitar-nerd, the simple shape, colour and features of every guitar evoke stories, memories, emotions and a thirst for more knowledge. A lot like my other passion for racing bicycles.

A bunch of emotive moments from movies have been coming back to me lately, as the Lonely Planet band have been rehearsing and performing for the summer season. I've been having these "that's just like the scene in ..." deja vu feelings. All of these movies make me want to leave this keyboard this instant and pick up the Strat instead - no other instrument is as evocative for me.

Rules of the list are that it can't be a movie or show that is actually about a real band. Thought I'd get to 10, but stalled at #8. All debate duly welcomed!

1. Wayne's World (1992) - "It will be mine - oh yes - it will be mine"

An iconic moment in this much-loved movie. The best guitar playing is undoubtedly Cassandra's band, but Wayne's attainment of the white Fender Stratocaster (which he refers to as Excalibur) in his local music shop is a triumph.

I have come to realise that as a wannabe guitarist you very much need to have one good "May I help you?" riff in your fingers to have ready when you are sifting through your local guitar store and require some assistance. Stumbling over an open G just is not rock. Wayne of course is the master.

The other two required riffs (just in case you were wondering) are the "I've just turned my amp on" riff at rehearsal (call this your signature chord, ideally timid people will jump when you hit it); and the "sound check riff", a longer arrangement which is the rock equivalent of a dog urinating to mark its patch on stage. Lenny Kravitz serves me well at this time, but I will admit deep jealousy at my Slabotomy friends Vivek and Ian's sound-check virtuosity.

Since this is the internet, I'm duty bound to bootleg the video of the "May I help you" moment:

2. This is Spinal Tap (1984)

Nigel Tufnel is my hero - and in 2011 (11/11/11) it is proposed to hold the first global Nigel Tufnel day. Responsible with a simple slip of the apostrophe for the infamous 18 inch stonehenge, he explains why when I see a Gibson or Epiphone Flying V guitar, a strange voice in my head goes "yeah, I could do that..."

I should probably aspire to a more respectable V-playing hero like Albert King.

Anyway, Spinal Tap as a shocking spoof of everything bad in rock music is actually a wonderful taste of what joy you can experience on stage, with a guitar strapped on and your amp turned to 11. Well, 5 actually, or Ian gets on my case.

3. Back to the Future (1985) - "whatever you do Marty..."

Episode 1 - Marty goes up to Doc Browns laboratory, and finding him not at home proceeds to do what every teenager who has ever watched this movie wants him to do, urges him to do - plug that guitar in, and turn it up. You know exactly what is coming, and it still takes your breath away, crummy 1980s special effects and all.

The guitar is a weird one, you don't really see it much - sort of a futuristic thing you'd expect to be lying around a mad inventor's laboratory. But it's not the guitar, it's the moment - clearly it's Marty's "I am plugged in" rehearsal opening chord.

4. Back to the future (1985) - Johnny B Goode

"Alright guys, this is a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes and try to keep up." Like some kind of incantation, Marty's words haunted me for years - what did that gibberish mean? Sounded very cool though, and seemed to work for the band. A famous Chuck Berry song, Johnny B Goode was not written until 3 years after the scene in the movie was set, which adds some humour to the moment.

I'm pretty sure it is a Gibson ES335 he is playing. So that explains my deep irrational yearnings for one, either in red or BB King black.

With luck the bootlegged video is still available for you to view on Vimeo.

marty mcfly - johnny b. goode from etsw on Vimeo.

5. Crossroads (1986)

A great scene from a terribly cheesy movie about a kid (a karate kid no less ;-) who drops out from the Julliard music school and goes on the road, ultimately acting out that great old country song The Devil Went down to Georgia in a battle with Satan's own guitarist - who just happens to be Steve Vai. Who is quite probably the right guy for that role.

Ry Cooder played all the guitar for Ralph Macchio in the movie - I won't linger in the guitar pseud's corner for long (because there are plenty of weird looking guys there already) but needless to say the music easily overcomes the plot, and I am always a sucker for a bit of redemption. With a Fender Telecaster you say? With the blues? I'll have an extra helping thankyou. And if I find myself in the same situation at some stage, I'll be looking around for Travis to help me out.

If you have the patience, the final duel scene can be viewed here:

6. The Blues Brothers (1980) - Ray's Music Exchange

I've written about this before, and of course, I own that very guitar in the picture. There is so much great guitar and bass playing in the movie, and yet it is in the background to the two main characters Jake and Elwood. I like the way Mad Guitar Murphy, Steve Cropper and Donald Duck Dunn are away from the limelight but drive this movie all the way home.

Doubtless a trained psychologist would observe that standing in the background being super-competent is akin to my own approach to life, which occasionally I have learned to overcome, ironically recently with the Lonely Planet band.

7. Oh Brother Where art Thou? (2000)

Hmm - the blues again. Guitars again. Wikipedia does a good summary of the circumstances in which a fictional character is crafted from the real bluesman and the legend of Robert Johnson cutting a deal with the devil (seeing a pattern yet anyone?):

"In the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? there is a character named Tommy Johnson (played by Chris Thomas King) who sold his soul to the devil to play guitar. He plays accompaniment for the Soggy Bottom Boys (a band consisting of the film's three main protagonists plus Johnson) on "Man of Constant Sorrow".

The character of Tommy Johnson in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is reminiscent of the real Tommy Johnson, who used to talk about how "he sold his soul to the devil" at a crossroads in return for making up songs and playing the guitar. The character plays a number of songs by blues musician Skip James. The character was not based on the better-known bluesman Robert Johnson, as some have speculated."

99% of the music in the movie is bluegrass or country, but a couple of soulful moments are captured when Tommy gets to play his guitar. A solid reminder that the beauty is in the simplicity of life - so few notes, so few words, so much meaning. Another thing for me to aspire to I suspect, as a master of too many words and too many things.

8. School of Rock (2003)

This movie ticks all the boxes - humour, music and good old redemption again. How exactly Jack Black manages to make all those instruments work without alerting the entire school district with the noise is a practical detail I am prepared to ignore.

My favourite scene is where the kids start to jam for the first time - Zach on the Flying V guitar, and Lawrence on keys. I recall the joy of the first time I played an electric guitar, fresh from 18 months ago when Rich Durnall handed over his vintage Strat and said "try this". I have observed the same wondrous look in many people's eyes since - the capacity to make so much noise from just a little strum!

To see Noah actually play in a real-life school of rock right here in Melbourne through 555 Music is a weird bit of life imitating art. And long may life imitate art, I say.

Lonely Planet band plays the Evelyn, December 9, 2010

2010-11-25T03:17:00.000-08:00

Lonely Planet Band at the Espy, Winter 2010

2010-06-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

Huge night raising money for Child Aid, a Planet Wheeler foundation supported project working on child literacy in rural areas in Guatemala. Great crowd, great music, and a wonderful event.

Lonely Planet's rock collective Slabotomy followed three great bands - Tony Jackson's Speed Orange; Ryan Sweeney's Roostar; and a trio of bluesmen with Travis Winters at the helm.

Here's the first photos in - shot by renaissance man Jamie Supple. I apologise in advance for curating a sub-set that include far too many of me ;-)

These artfully lit shots are from Mark Broadhead and his magic Nikon.

Lonely Planet Espy Gig June 10th, 2010

2010-05-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

Let’s fill the Gershwin Room!

Every year the LP Band gig at the Espy’s Gershwin Room gets bigger and bigger. In June, we’ll need your help to make this the best event ever.

This time, we are supporting Child Aid in Guatemala – a Planet Wheeler supported project recommended by LP authors Lucas Vidgin and Danny Palmerlee. They give rural Guatemalan children access to books, build community libraries, train teachers, organize literacy programs and get kids back into school.

We are honoured this year to share the stage with some astonishingly talented musicians in the Lonely Planet community:

Speed Orange, fronted by Tony Jackson (also legendary producer of many LPTV soundtracks)

Roostar, fronted by Ryan Sweeney (he played the Espy only this week in fact)

Travis Winters, full time dad and bluesman – watch what he can do with a brutalized Telecaster at our open mike night!

Slabotomy will take the stage around 9pm with two ambitious sets of rock/pop/jazz/fusion. We’re proud to introduce several new musicians alongside the long-timers this time around.

You can also help out by Tweeting and Facebooking an invitation. Or, for the old-school, just tell all your friends! It’s a great cause, and we couldn’t be more excited. Let’s make this a night to remember.

P.S. Thanks to David and Will at R+R Communications in NZ for the awesome poster design

How big is the Internet?

2010-04-29T01:19:00.000-07:00

About this big:

Great moments in a Rock Education - Scot Halpin leaps out of the crowd to drum for the Who in 1973

2010-04-10T01:47:00.001-07:00

A great story - told well here on Wikipedia. Keith Moon, having taken enough drugs mixed with alcohol to fuel a lifetime of TAC adverts, collapses on his drums a second time and is carried off-stage 2/3 of the way through the Who's set at the Cow Palace on their USA tour in 1972.

Pete Townsend asks the crowd "can anyone play the drums?" and one guy steps up to help out. The rest is rock history.

Thanks Juliette_B for today's rock lessons!

Great moments in a Rock Education - Led Zeppelin in Sydney

2010-04-10T00:25:00.000-07:00

In the new world of iPads and eBooks, it is my dream that I will be able to consume brilliant books like When Giants Walked the Earth while accessing matching embedded video and audio content on every page. This would be the video I would wish for if they had actually mentioned their 1972 tour to Australia, when they played in Sydney!

An additional take on the story can be had here on ABC's 7:30 news piece featuring Ted Harvey's exhibition of his 36 year old concert photos rediscovered in 2008.

Facebook - building up the Walled Garden where AOL left off?

2010-04-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

As some would know, I recently dived back into the seething biomass known as Facebook. I'd abandoned the service (committing 'Facebookicide') in 2008, after being stalked by one too many lesbians from Queensland to be their latest collected trophy-friend (me, a trophy?). Sorry, I already have a lesbian friend and she's very real thankyou.

From where I sat, it appeared to be a massive online home for the bewildered.

Lured back into the water in 2010 by online community Siren Venessa P and the Lonely Planet strategic thinkers, I am amazed to see how it has grown. So much so, that my initial conclusion is that we are now dealing with a serious platform leap from college dorm to a new core of the internet - and another prime example of the tension between different perspectives on the web as a democratic platform, versus a closed, proprietary commercial network.

There has always been someone who attempted to dominate the shabby collection of servers, wires and users we call the internet. Its not surprising - human history is peppered with rising and falling empires, and this new digital land grab is much the same. If you'll pardon the quality of the research, here' s my potted view of the history of that race between the open and closed camps. As always, Wikipedia is a better historian than I'll ever be, so many links go to them!

ARPAnet (1958 - 1988): apparently originally inspired in the Cold War period (in particular Sputnik's shock factor in the technology race), this loose confederation of military and academic servers and connections was the seed of the internet and the classic 'closed' network.

Minitel (1982): ultimately nearly 25m French people were connected to Minitel, a governmental postal/telecom collaboration to supply citizens with access via a terminal to information directories, booking services, message boards, stock prices and chat services. The network was tightly managed and closed to anything not endorsed by the state - a position the owners far too long into the life of the internet as it developed in the 1990s. That said, the announcement it would be finally killed off in 2009 was met with public outcry - and still 1m banking transactions a month are done on the historic terminals.

AOL (1983): the first major money making walled garden on the internet in the English speaking world, founded on online games and communities (including popularising chat on the internet with ICQ), rising to 30m users over the next 20 years then famously blowing it all in a merger with Time Warner in 2001. Who could forget the rain-storm of direct marketed CD-ROMs that came in fancy tins and packages tempting you onto their network? And once you were in, they had you under their control. Most AOL users right through the 1990s thought AOL was the internet, holus-bolus.

The actual Internet (1988): the year the military and the commercial networkers joined up, including emerging private sector networks Compuserve, UUNet, PSINet, CERFNET, and Usenet. Still a bunch of list servers, technical people and a minimum number of tools to connect people without IT degrees or an interest in ham radio.

World Wide Web (1991): with the term coined by CERN's Tim Berners-Lee, this was a layer on top of the internet that enabled sharing of resources beyond the list and text heavy document and email platform. It was classicly 'open' - anarchic in some ways with the emphasis on interconnection to make the world a better place through sharing.

The web caused a boom in browser software (and with Netscape Navigator in 1994 the beginning of the get rich quick internet startup decade), the lens you needed to see everything that was out there, no matter who or where it was served. Unless perhaps you live in China or the new Australia.

MSN (1995): Microsoft famously 'got the web' in the mid-90s, and MSN was their attempt at a walled garden, which basically proved they did not get the web at all. Their ongoing efforts to keep people within their domain included Hotmail, Messenger, MSN Explorer, and to some extent Internet Explorer as a non-standard browser. MSN has around 10m members today (note: fact to be checked), and has morphed into Windows Live as Microsoft's attempt to stay relevant to a generation of users that prefer to Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Broadband WWW (c2005): without doubt the expansion of high speed wiring to the many nodes of the internet changed the game, and saw the emergence of traditional media players showing video, images and enabling collaboration and sharing in ways that dialup constrained.

Mobile WWW (c2008): 3G wireless in wide supply and a new generation of intelligent phone handsets once again changed the nature of the internet, initially slowing some things down but causing simplification and refocus about what it meant to be connected 24 x 7 x 365. Without doubt the earlier incarnations of the wireless web contributed to the acceleration of internet users to an estimated 1.6b in 2009.

Facebook (September 2006): starting small and purposeful, this College white pages site has emerged as a global player, with enough functionality and interconnectivity to keep an 'internet' user within it's 4 walls for hours a day. On its way to a self-professed 1 billion members by 2012, it already has 400m members across the world and 200m highly active contributors.

Remember it took the internet 2 decades to get 1b members!

The combination of Facebook's fast-growing community plus hardwiring to platforms like iTunes and news media (via Facebook Connect) is further enhancing the rush back to a new type of walled garden. My beloved iPhone is a simple example - Facebook actually wraps an unbranded Safari browser for links external to Facebook, and I am rarely more than 1 button away from my news stream.

At the same time, people are searching, chatting, messaging, piping in their Twitter streams, their Youtube favourites, their Amazon book reviews and their Flickr photo collections. And spending on average 6.5 hours a day connected to the site. Soon there will be word processing, spreadsheets and proper search, and your homepage on Firefox or Chrome will be http://www.facebook.com.
Advertisers on TV and the web are starting to end their 30 second commercials with 'See us on Facebook' rather than making us remember their torturous www.thenextbigthing.com URL or go to a site generation Y probably can't even use because of its overdesigned 1990s based navigation and complexity. Businesses are starting to consider internal Facebook networks to replace Microsoft's 20 year old Outlook email and messaging, and a growing number of tools like Yammer are emerging to fill the gaps.

Now, the traditional website concept is unlikely to go away, and no doubt history will show that something succeeds Facebook. But for many people, Facebook will be the new AOL - you can check out, but you can never leave.

Call me a hippy, but I think I liked the Tim Berners-Lee vision better.

The Best Things in Life - being 8 years old and jamming with the Lonely Planet Band

2010-02-26T03:56:00.000-08:00

Open Mike night, February 2010. 28 degrees on the rooftop of Lonely Planet in Melbourne looking back over the city.

Ian, Trav, Josh, Vivek, me on Cream's Sunshine. Awesome photo by Steve McInnes

Then this happens:

A memory that will be with that boy for the rest of his life.

More photos from the LP crew here on Flickr.

More video from Lucy Birchley on Youtube:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg2xBBTpoF4
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCdDERnqLoI
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA6eH6JU6zs
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpbY-Y-n34U

Superbowl of Advertising

2010-02-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

Forget the football (Vikings knocked out anyway), here's the adverts:

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foursquare.com - the enemy of Authentic

2010-02-07T00:38:00.001-08:00

We've just got back in from a great afternoon gig by Nick Thorpe and the new wave/ country/ rock Prayerbabies at the Union Hotel in Brunswick. I am Melbourne hot, but still burning enough to unleash 'mental of Middle Park' on the world being created and enhanced by the socially transmitted disease foursquare.com. And their ilk (you know who you are).

As I surveyed the rocking, family-heavy crowd having a fine time in a small pub in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, a recent tweet from @venessapaech ("I'll say it, foursquare is just plain silly") popped back into my brain and I couldn't help but consider how suckingk it would be to impose a yelping foursquare dot com culture on this treasure.

It's time we made some 'no foursquare' stickers with the slash through their logo, before it's too late.
Foursquare (for those who have been asleep for the last 6 months) is a 'social network' that enables you to show off to your friends as to how cool you are, gather repeat visitor badges and perhaps even become the 'mayor' of the nearest coffee shop, with resulting retail discounts for you and all your friends. It reminds me of a digital strain of herpes in some ways.

I did not want your store loyalty card in exchange for my email address in 2001, and I don't want your gimmicky digital equivalent in 2010.

Naturally it's got all the vulture capitalist buzzwords du jour - cloud, lbs (not leg before stumps, location based services), social network, platform... (blogger feellinnnnggggg slleeeeeeeepppyyyyy...). And naturally it's worth more than the GDP of New Zealand.

It is about creating a world like Friends, the TV show, on your iPhone. And we know how real that was.

During the week I listened to an impassioned plea for the avoidance of temptation to join the current zombie economy, a great term describing the massive brainwashing people are getting this century into thinking that if you don't have a 50" flat screen Sony TV, XBOX, surround sound, $10,000 on your credit card, an iPhone 3GS, 2,000 Facebook friends, the new Commodore and a 6 figure mortgage, you are not actually living.

Fortunately the equal and opposite force of the zombie economy is a desperate rush for authenticity. As things get more fake, buying local produce, riding a bike (not a hipster fixie though) or going to live music becomes a life-enhancing thing. As it was for us this afternoon with the Prayerbabies.

I didn't need my dog food online in 2000, I don't need dozens of facebook friends, and I don't need to know where you all are this afternoon drinking your free Pabst Red Label that you got for checking in 10 times already this year. That ain't real.

Now I think about it, the whole lbsn idea (location based social network, I made that up by the way, can I have some vulture capital now please?) was quite possibly founded on the Australian Kath and Kim social principle of 'Loogamoi, loogamoi', and it comes to mind they missed a real chance to launch loogamoi.com, an LBS plotting your movements around Fountaingate shopping centre. Instead some upstarts with a product called Fastmall beat them to it.

Make no mistake, I'm not an utter misanthrope - I was absolutely thrilled to run into Travis, Jason and Mel, there with kids in tow, but the thrill was in the coincidence and the spontaneity.

As luck would have it, the only foursquare action at the Union was the dancing going on (average age 4, main dance move, the square). Long may that be so.

iPad - Add to Dictionary? Yes please.

2010-01-27T22:01:00.001-08:00

Wonder how many people saw this dialog box today?

New Zealand backroads - Kihikihi to Lake Taupo

2010-01-25T03:08:00.000-08:00

X marks the spot on a pirate's map. Luckily Google maps have both X's and Y's, as it makes finding and navigating New Zealand's last remaining back-road treasures a lot easier. Here's one of my favourites to try the next time you have to get South from Auckland and want to avoid traffic, plus see some of the kiwi heartland.

View Larger Map

We traveled this route a few days into 2010, keen to avoid State Highway 1 on the well-worn track from Hamilton to Taupo. The road condition is brilliant, through the rolling hill country of the South Waikato region. State Highway 1 reported delays in some small towns of up to half an hour. Avoid!

Lots of personal memories for me motoring this way - starting with an early Split Enz concert at the Te Awamutu race-course, playing to a few hundred people in the sun on a Saturday afternoon.

A few kilometres South-east of Kihikihi keep an eye out for the ghost filled Orakau battle site, the scene of one of the last desperate battles in NZ's war for land and resources in the 1860s. From memory the road runs right through the middle of it. Hmmm.

View Larger Map

The drive also kindles memories of visiting farming family friends in the Owairaka Valley, hiking in the Pureora Forest, and learning of the destruction of lowland podocarp forests while on a University environmental geography camp to Barryville. Stopping to stand on top of the Waipapa hydro dam listening to the hum of the turbines, and laughing over what tourists (and now our 8 year old) think of a name like Whakamaru pronounced with an F.

But you don't need to have grown up in this area to enjoy the drive. The road is beautifully engineered, you'll need your wits about you if you're pushing on as the lanes are narrow. There's a seriously winding bit going down to river level at Waipapa and climbing out the other side. Brilliant on a motorcycle, likely to be spew inducing on a weak stomach in the back seat I'm afraid.

Watch out for cyclists - they're smart to take this route to Taupo if they can hack the climbs. Te Awamutu has bred some world class cyclists trained on this countryside. There's a store at Wharepapa South for a break.

The turnoff at Owairaka Valley Road 10km out from Kihikihi is going to give your GPS-brained TomTom sat nav device the heebies and you should steadfastly ignore its demand you stick to the main road, and turn right. It'll forgive your defiance when you rejoin the highway further along.

And of course, if you have the time, take a few side roads along the way.

The Best Things in Life - Them Crooked Vultures perform in Melbourne

2010-01-25T01:44:00.000-08:00

The photo is technically rubbish I know. Standing behind 1,000 people at Melbourne's Festival Hall, most of whom seemed to be 6 feet tall, glaring lights, greenish cast, and only an iPhone to hand ... Mark_LP would be horrified. But the memory is locked away in vivid 3-D Blueray.

Being thumped in the chest for 90 minutes by John Paul Jones' bass (who clearly got in on Robert Johnson's contract with you know who - he looks 30!); entranced by the speed of Dave Grohl's man-possessed percussion; and jaw-dropped at the antics and vocals of Josh Homme. Did I ever imagine you could climb on the bass drum and whack cymbals while playing lead guitar?

Invited along as part of my musical education by Rich Durnall, I thank my lucky stars for the chance to see what amounts to one of the all-time greatest rock bands. The live act exceeded the 2009 CD's quality several times over, no mean feat. I came away with swirling metaphors of having 3 of the greatest geniuses in any one field of endeavour not only in the same room, but working together to create something few will hope to match. None came.

Supporting the superstars was Alain Johannes, no mean guitarist and musician in his own right. Interesting to see the contrast between 'great' and 'super-nova brilliant' on the same stage though.

Half way through the night I was plotting to just come home, quietly pack the guitars away in a cupboard and retire quietly to less creative pastimes.

By the time we'd got back to the car, the chance to be just a 1% part of the emotional crash-cart that outstanding rock music can be convinced me to at least strum a few power chords in the morning. And as luck would have it, thanks to these little beauties, I could hear them.

Them Crooked Vultures live 10/10. Rich Durnall, teacher 10/10 . Hearos musician's ear protection 10/10.

Bikes I love: Benotto Modelo 3000 c1980

2010-01-16T04:06:00.000-08:00

Between 2004 and 2007, the gang at R+R in Wellington NZ undertook a variety of vintage racing bike renovation projects.

The full story of the history of this Benotto will be told by Robbo at some stage, but needless to say it is a beautiful thing. To be accurate, they are beautiful things. In the end two bikes were completed - when in true Murphy's Law sense, after a year of searching the globe 2 came up in succession on eBay - one in Minnesota and one in California.

Robbo's intent was to rebuild a bike dear to him from the early 1980s in Europe - with his original Campagnolo 50th anniversary groupset, one of the few that must have actually ever been raced (as opposed to locked away in a cupboard to admire from time to time).

Having taken so much guidance on what was authentic on my restoration of a 1979 Bianchi, we knew the result with the Benotto would be spectacular. After securing the bikes back to NZ (most of the parts from which were set aside, as they'd been modified over the intervening decades), the hunt was on for NOS (new old stock) components to fill the gaps.

One of the most interesting was the Benotto handlebar tape. I took up cycling later in the 1980s when this horrible stuff had been surpassed by gaudy padded cork tapes, and never had to endure gripping the cold slippery, hard as nails stuff.

Some evil petrochemicals must lurk in the recipe for this tape as the package arrived in the mail with the colour unfaded after 25 years on the shelf.

New decals were prepared by Photoshop guru Brent Backhouse from scratch, the frame painted by the late Ross Bee (after much debate on the precise colour - Dave was pretty sure Ross had some left over in his garage from a respray of the original bike!) and suitable rims obtained for the hubs. A missing front hub from the 50th anniversary set took 9 months to find on the web.

All in all, I suspect Signor Giacinto Benotto would be as proud of the result as he is showing the world the Benotto 3000 Tour of Italy special edition on this advertisement. Bella!

Tintin Coincidences - #2 in a series

2010-01-10T03:52:00.001-08:00

This one from Flight 714, where Tintin, Captain Haddock and the Professor hitch a ride with eccentric millionaire technologist Laszlo Carreidas from Djakarta to Sydney.

Our CEO at Lonely Planet is Matt Goldberg, New Yorker, and a true champion of the telephone as a communication device.

Wellington's Cafe L'Affare Turns 20 in 2010

2010-01-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

One of the institutions that led Wellington NZ into being the coffee snob capital of the country is Cafe L'Affare. We were there this week on our last day of our annual kiwi Christmas holiday, sitting at a table that has been part of the place since early days - including a massive amount of graffiti - and we noticed this wonderful bit of coffee art carved simply into the surface.

It is hard to believe they are turning 20 this year - but among our friends we can put together an oral history of their various phases (even back to the original days with Askew's design store taking up half the space), the people and events that have made it world-class for food and coffee.

In my R+R days we spent many an hour noodling ideas at the tall table in the window, or out the back by the coffee machine retail area. I hope I'm ordering a petit pain, Caesar with chicken and extra anchovies, with a latte to follow, in 20 years from now.

Blues Brothers - 30 Year Anniversary in 2010

2009-12-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

I've written about Breaking Away as an important movie in my life, inspiring a fascination with racing bicycles, Italy and la dolce vita.

That was 1979. Here comes 1980. Last year of high school, and The Blues Brothers hits our NZ screens.

A year ago I rented the original 1980 movie to watch with Noah (with handy ear covers ready for the obvious bits), and was pretty disappointed. Sound was so-so, the picture was grimy, and the story hinged on the high points of musical performance, plunging into dull periods of conversation and inaction.

I recall yawning and reminding myself that memories can play tricks on you.

We rented it again tonight.

And discovered to our joy that John Landis has managed to pull together an extended edition with remastered sound, new scenes and extended dialogue in various places. It's back to being a classic!

What a tragedy that the original cut, tested in a movie theatre in Los Angeles and declared by studio executives as "only going to attract a black audience", has been lost forever. They forced Landis to shorten the movie so it required no intermission.

With its 30th anniversary next year, it's time to celebrate what the Blues Brothers did to create an interest in the blues for people like me as far from Chicago as it is about possible to get on this planet. This must be the greatest B-movie ever made, with more superstar cameos than the V&A museum cameo collection.

And to file under 'subliminal influence', Ray's Music Exchange (with the subsequent 'Shake Your Tailfeather' dance spectacular) has always been my favourite scene - check out which guitar the kid is trying to steal when Ray shoots 2 well-placed warning shots into the wall from the other end of the shop!

That's pretty much how I would have looked if I hadn't been able to take my black stratocaster that fateful day in April! And why going into music shops can be such fun when there are people browsing the shelves around you who, despite not being Ray Charles, Steve Cropper or Donald Duck Dunn, could highly likely still light the place up in an instant.

“It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.”

“Hit it.”

Why I ride a motorcycle to work in Melbourne - a series.

2009-12-14T03:49:00.000-08:00

Crazy old guy on cellphone at the top of his voice explaining to his Mum how he gets 100 minutes of talk time with the new phone he had to buy after the other one stopped working when he slept on the street in the rain at the weekend and he gets 150 texts per month for free as well and he's now just by City Road but going to St Kilda...

Wish his Mum would tell him to use his inside voice.

10 people tightly squeezed around me, all on iPhones and iPods trying to not hear crazy guy. MX newspaper with massive photo of Katy Perry's boobs falling out of her dress with headline "Has Katy got a bung eye?" based on a 2 line vox populi. 290,000 people in Melbourne read this crap every day?

Mouth "excuse me" with walking finger mime 15 times to headphone escapists just to squeeze past and get out at Albert Park. I'll take 40 degrees on the Gixxer in leather any day of the week thanks.

Favourite things - Herge illustration of Australia and NZ

2009-12-11T22:32:00.000-08:00

Tintin was always a favourite character for me, although returning to them with Noah I have to say they are hard work to read out loud - they need the voices and accents I hear in my head but cannot reproduce. The pen and ink drawings are captivating enough on their own.

This illustration in 1959's Explorers on the Moon caught my eye - look which tiny part of the blue planet Herge has chosen to show.

Vintage Cycling Postcards - 1958 Corriere dello Sport

2009-12-11T22:10:00.000-08:00

Corriere dello Sport was a main Italian sporting newspaper, and this card promotes the 1958 motorcycle and bicycle show. I've seen this card on eBay for up to 40 euros, I got it in the same batch as the Bartali and Coppi cards in 1994.

On the reverse it has a lovely stamp and postmark.

Vintage Cycling Postcards - Totosport 38th Giro D'Italia

2009-12-11T22:04:00.000-08:00

This card is from the 1955 Giro, won by Fiorenzi Magni for the 3rd time. The card promotes Totosport, the Italian betting agency.

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Gino Bartali with Giordani Bike

2009-12-11T18:14:00.000-08:00

Another in my postcard collection from that trip to the Giro d'Italia in the 1990s.

The rivalry between Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi is well documented on Wikipedia, so I won't attempt to add to the existing catalog of observation and opinion on the subject. Gino was a legend in his own right, even without the rivalry that stopped a nation.

Personally blessed by 3 popes, and known as Gino the Pious, he died at the grand age of 85 in 2000 after open heart surgery .

Like all postcards, I struggle to guess if it's a fake or real. Finding it in an Italian flea-market in 1994 gives me some confidence it's not a digital print, as technology was not that great then. Nor had the internet made a global market for cycling memorabilia.

I found one the same recently on eBay in Italy for 15 euros that looks pretty similar, though the signature has some interesting variations and the picture has a pure black and white treatment where mine has a blue tone. You decide which is real!

International differences - getting a job in America

2009-12-11T15:29:00.000-08:00

The startup I went to work for in the USA, now rolled up into a company called PreVisor, was in the serious business of selecting employees for Fortune 500 companies of all kinds.

The scale of the USA employment market is massive. Walmart for example, have over a million employees, turning over at an unbelievable rate (because the job sucks!), and over 12m job applicants a year. Most apply on-line, so how do you deal with that many resumes in your in-tray?

ePredix was a genius idea, providing an online, short psychological assessment which scored in real-time a view of the suitability of the person for the job. One key was that it was legally defensible, asking job-relevant questions that truly predicted the likelihood of success in a job.

This test was what we were competing with.

If you can't read the questions, click on the picture and it will open in a new window.

And think about what you'd be prepared to say to get a $6/hr job at a Rent-A-Center branch in Arkansas.

International differences - the philosophy of Click & Clack

2009-12-11T15:19:00.001-08:00

If you have never listened to Car Talk, then you have not lived. It is probably the #1 syndicated show on radio in the USA, and listened to by a wide variety of people - many not interested in cars at all.

Starting out as a mechanical advice show on Public Service radio, it morphed through the personalities of the Magliozzi brothers into a sociological and philosophical series of pithy observations, through the lens of a mechanic. As vehicles became less and less fixable by the average American, the show became more and more about people.

Our neighbour in Minneapolis had been on Car Talk - she was famous! You have to have an interesting car problem, which you line up weeks or months in advance, then the show calls you live on air.

Their podcasts and books are priceless - check them out on iTunes. Make sure you get to the end, where they will make up a set of phoney credits for the show.

Here's one of my favourite moments of Tom and Ray's reflections on life in the USA (and its difference to life elsewhere), in their newspaper column from July 2003.

Don't get me started on Americans and guns.

International differences - another in the series

2009-12-11T15:15:00.000-08:00

NZ Sports Culture.

Can you tell I've just been going through some old folders from our time in the USA? Hence all the posts in this series.

This cartoon was a complete surprise to me when I opened the Minneapolis paper one day. Made me homesick.

Priceless.

International, but not worldy. The true meaning of POOF

2009-12-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

The stated aim of this blog was to reflect on the cultural differences that sometimes trip us up when crossing international borders - you think you know what is going on, but in reality it is something quite different.

I hung onto this email from 2003 as one of the prime examples. ePredix, whom I worked for in San Francisco and Minneapolis, were part-owned by a large, successful, global consulting form Personnel Decisions International.

As Australians and kiwis we had a bit of a chuckle at this faux pas, but my time since has given me cause to wonder about the blunders we all made in reverse!

Nice save Cindy Marsh.

The Psychology of Amplifiers

2009-12-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

I do love XKCD.

Lonely Planet Band for Christmas

2009-12-07T03:16:00.000-08:00

The band added Robbie William's Let Me Entertain You to the Espy set and went wild again celebrating the end of 2009 in style. Once again supported by Sparkle Motion, who performed a tight version of their Espy set and showed their musicianship.

Bunch of miscellaneous photos, as always biased towards Slabotomy's #5 guitarist.

Here's a taste of the skills of Mark Broadhead shooting bands and events.

Melbourne Weather Phenomenon (2 in a series)

2009-12-06T03:34:00.000-08:00

As a child I was fascinated by the stories of UFOs in Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods series of books. Well, there's my first sighting on the horizon of this photo, taken returning home from Thoughtworks' Quarterly Technology Briefing in Sydney.

Sadly, too many easy explanations I suppose. Gas balls escaping from a federal carbon trading policy perhaps...

Melbourne Weather Phenomenon (1 in a series)

2009-12-06T03:24:00.000-08:00

Observed last week from our rooftop on a day of moist, Southerly winds driving up against the side of Melbourne's tallest tower block on a bright, sunny day.

I prefer to believe it is an outpouring of sonic energy and awesomeness from a searing 1997 Gibson SG being cranked up by the occupant of an upper-level apartment. He shall remain nameless in case the Department for the Environment get any complaints about contribution to global warming.

Pseud's Corner - Signspotting in Melbourne

2009-12-06T03:11:00.000-08:00

If only we had some effing eggs we could make an effing omelette. Much amusement for 8 year old boys of all ages.

Where did all Melbourne's water go?

2009-11-30T02:58:00.000-08:00

38%!! Bizarrely, I am so excited that Melbourne's water storage levels are back above the 1/3 of capacity mark for the first time in ages. But the situation deserves an economist's eye methinks...

If you think I can rant about the dodgy nature of Melbourne's toll roads and speeding taxes, don't even get me started on the water situation in Australia's fastest growing city (1800 new residents a week according to The Age last weekend).

Expect a Michael Moore documentary at some stage on the collusion between Victoria's state government and the desalination industry that has led us (via corporate wankerism and short term political cycles) through utter political brinksmanship to the edge of a crisis where the only solution has become vast water projects.

Any planner would have to be blind(folded) to not see the correlation between Melbourne's population growth and the decline in our water stored in the city's dams and reservoirs. Instead, playing to our bleeding heart environmental psyches, the blame has fallen on the uncontrollable 'global climate change problem'. "No incompetence to see here Mr Public, it's all the fault of that dreadful climate change bogeyman".

First step: prepare to be sobered up and go to this page on the Melbourne Water website to see for yourself how the trend has been in water storage since 1997. Great interactive graph - static version above. Ugly situation indeed.

Let's see what the Bureau of Meterology have to say about the long term rainfall trends for Melbourne. Always ups and downs basically, although the worst time in history has definitely been the last decade.

Plenty of websites will confirm we have had a drought since 1997 . Is that to blame? Well, certainly - less inflows means an inevitable decline in water levels.

But how have we been growing our storage facilities over the last 3 decades to cope with the completely predictable (compared to weather forecasting that is) influx of immigrants like me? Storage in lakes? Storage in urban reservoirs? Stormwater storage in the monumental new suburbs going up on Melbourne's outskirts? Water tanks? Conservation programs?

Checking out this page on Melbourne Water's site I think we see the culprit - the dreaded 'corporatisation' starts to occur in the 1990s:

1991: The Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works merged with a number of smaller urban water authorities to form Melbourne Water.

1994: Three years later, the Victorian Government announced that Melbourne Water was going to be divided into three retail water companies and a wholesale water company.

The only 'new' storage construction I can see on this timeline since bureaucratisation is the celebrated reconnection of the Tarago Reservoir in 2009, the closure of which was the first act of the new-born Melbourne Water organisation 15 years earlier.

The timeline is full of money invested in strategies and action plans, campaigns and buzzwords, retreats and think-tanks, call centres and quality assurance programs, millions was spent on computer billing systems, advertising and bugger all done to actually store more water.

I guess they all really missed having Wikipedia back in the 1990s. The planners and politicians just needed this graph on their wall to jolly along their water resource strategy thingo.

Turn it 90 degrees to the right and it bears an uncanny resemblance to our declining water levels in the dams.

Lonely Planet Band Rocks the Espy

2009-11-26T03:17:00.000-08:00

The gig finally arrived.

A great audience filled the Gershwin Room at the Espy on a Wednesday night - mid-summer this time so lots of beer bought to keep the venue happy. The pool of friends and family from both the Thoughtworks band Sparkle Motion (who opened the night with a hard-rocking set), and Slabotomy who played 2 sets raised over $1200 for The Hotham Mission.

Tony and Maureen Wheeler came along to support the crew, and like most were amazed by the rotating talent on stage.

Photos are mostly from LP documentarian Mark Broadhead, whose skills at capturing such vibrance in next to no-light situations are renowned. Please excuse the obvious bias - I've only grabbed the ones with me in them, as I know Mark likes to have a bit of an edit before he puts them out in public.

I played bass on Hot and Cold, added a nerve tangling E on Song 2, held the G - F - G - Bb - F - G line for Lady Marmalade, some rocking chords on Dakota (my favourite) and was honoured to tinkle away behind Zjelko on a searing Creep. 6 notes, 5 songs, and another lesson in how to bring the house down from the gods of Slabotomy's theatre of rock.

Agile Australia 2009

2009-11-18T03:10:00.001-08:00

Eric Jansen of Thoughtworks sent this photo of me in full flight evangelising Agile and Lean software development at October's Agile 2009 conference in Sydney, Australia.

The slide is one of my favourites - and comes with a quote from Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy where the war psychologist treating a variety of soldiers with new psychological therapies reflects on how change is a messy process:

"Rivers knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay."

Don't expect your change to agile to be elegant!

The conference was excellent, with a range of speakers including Jeff Smith, the CIO of Suncorp and Dave Thomas from Bedarra - both of whom you can see on video on the conference site.

Lonely Planet Band Returns - Espy Hotel, 25 November 2009

2009-11-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

Get this in your diary quick – the Espy is always a special night out for Lonely Planet and the band.

Joined this year by Thoughtworks' Melbourne band Sparkle Motion, it promises 3 sets of rock so good you won’t dare admit that you stayed home and watched NCIS Los Angeles instead.

Proceeds to the Hotham Mission.

That stunning poster was done by David Robertson, Ezra and Will from Robertson Communications Consultancy (R+R) in Wellington New Zealand.

Consumer Review: Melbourne Eastlink toll system, impossibly stupid.

2009-10-09T03:21:00.000-07:00

The occasional h1bpositive blog visitor might recall the fine Winter's day out Matthew, Jamie and I had on the motorbikes back in June. After riding to Noojee, we came home via the much lauded Eastlink, Melbourne's new tollway, hailed as the poster-boy of public-private infrastructure funding.

We'd each organised our pre-paid tollway passes to travel on Eastlink, a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare as the rules and processes for motorcycles and cars vary considerably, and the Eastlink/Breeze web page would count among the worst possible User Interface designs ever created.

I eventually bought 4 passes over the phone (figuring we'd ride again out that way sometime soon), and had the foresight to email myself with the order details, just in case something went awry in future. Call it intuition, or call it twenty plus years working with computers and customers for a living.

To my amazement, in September, I got an overdue notice for riding on Eastlink without a pass. One trip, 12:32pm on June 20, 2009. Clocked riding into the Melba Tunnel in an unauthorised fashion. Outstanding Debt:

Toll charge $1.04
Invoice fee $8.45
Lookup fee $1.40
GST $1.08
TOTAL $11.97

I rang Breeze to seek an explanation. Now - quick caveat to my rant here - the lady I spoke to was sensational with her service, but, she's working for bozos. $2.5b bozos. First I had to quote the 12 digit invoice number - not the reminder notice 12 digit number, but the original invoice number buried in fine print of the letter on page 1. Man, these guys are planning for the future - no Y2k-like character limit for their invoice numbers. Not real easy to communicate over the telephone however.

That number, along with my registration plate, motorcycle type and colour, enabled her to see the infringement notice. Then, she logged into a second screen that enabled her to see if that license plate number had any purchases registered against it. Tick, tick, tick, one moment please caller, tick, tick... and yes ... there they are, 4 passes purchased on 19 June.

So... the 'computer' could see my registration plate had 4 passes credited against it, and the computer could see that I had made a trip on 20 June, but somehow the computer had recorded that at 12:32 on 20 June, the mighty Gixxer was without passes on the tollway. The pass ordering computer and the traffic tracking computer seem to be different computers.

I guess that could happen - the road construction consortium would have outsourced vehicle tracking, invoicing and administration to the lowest bidders, as they all do nowadays. There might have been a momentary glitch in 'the computer' as the Gixxer roared by? So maybe it's actually 3 computers? One on the road, one for ordering, and one for billing? Or 4? Road, ordering, billing, infringing? Or 5? Road, order, bill, infringe and reconcile?

As an IT professional, my mind boggles as to how these things happen, and it's an embarrassment to the profession. So, who are the chumps who put together this computer system, and how much did it cost? Perhaps they did it on the cheap?

The billing infrastructure was part of a much trumpeted $2.5b (yep, billion) traffic management system for this tollway. The winning bidder was Traffic Management Systems - a listed rollup of various Australian traffic signage and control systems companies, which is listed under the TTI stock code.

TTI's publicly stated turnover has only been in the range of $57m - $95m, stating turnover of $57m in the year the tollway system was built (they only had 6 months to bill between the contract being let in November 2005 and end of financial year in June 2006), then $81.5m in 2007, and $95m in 2008 when the roadway finally opened. Thus they clearly didn't get all of the $2.5 billion. I'm going to guess a mere $100m for the computer system over the 2+ years.

A $100m computer system then. Reckon they would only give that contract to a really proven and solid software development company, that had a track record and long term profitability. So let's check out TTI's track record of success during Australia's largest infrastructure boom from 1998 to today:

WTF? Peaking at $46 at the end of 1999, these guys are an unprofitable penny dreadful trading at not more than a few cents a share for years on end. Have been since a year before they got the Eastlink contract. At 6c a share, I could own the whole damn company with the money I'm paying in bogus $11.97 tollway fines.

Chances of them having the smartest IT people to make that system work? Not good.

Customer Service have promised to get back to me with how this all happened. I won't hold my breath, as without doubt that's yet another computer system they were recording my complaint details into when I rang.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
13.10.2009 Result!

Product Review: Suunto T1 Heart Rate Monitor

2009-10-04T00:39:00.000-07:00

Suunto - Finnish for 'Disappointment'?

After my little heart problem in 2008, I decided to return to the Heart Rate Monitor market after several years in absentia, years spent muttering like a crazy person about pathetic battery life, interference issues, fragile chest straps and repeated disappointment.

In the 1990s, most bike shops were pretty reluctant to sell them, as they delivered way too many opportunities to test out the warranty service of the manufacturers.

The actual NEED to have a new gadget was too much of an opportunity to miss in life. The main result of my 5+ hours of internet research was the conclusion I really wanted a Power Meter of some kind instead. At several thousand dollars I was able to resist that temptation with ease.

My friend Glen has been a Polar stalwart for many years, valuing the data functions, the big watches, and the software for his PC. He was not loving the need to send them away to get batteries changed, which seemed bizarre in this day and age. Nor was he loving the data loss every time we rode under the power lines outside the Scienceworks museum on our Altona rides, but he'd worked out how to join 2 broken training sessions again on the computer.

I just couldn't get my head around their range of products. The ideally featured Polar HRM (for me) came as a bike computer, not a watch. I don't like a big hulking bike computer, I prefer my little minimalist unit. And I wanted something to wear in the gym.

Not to mention there was no way I was paying THAT much for an HRM!

With plenty of time on my hands recovering from open heart surgery, I finally concluded that the new Suunto range of HRMs, provided they lived up to the other products developed and sold by Suunto (avionics included), were a fine-looking, 12 month warrantied, and well featured product for a great price.

So, to cut a long review short, I'm here to tell you they're rubbish.

The critical flaw is the plastic watch face, and the lack of a protective bezel. Within weeks this watch becomes unreadable in normal use. It's not something you think about, how much you bump your watch. Now I know why the Japanese watches with plastic faces have such monstrous surrounds (think G-Shock). And why expensive watches have glass faces.

The flaw that actually killed by T1 was the screws in the back coming loose in Month 13 of ownership (I lost 2 before it became obvious) rendering it open to the elements, and subsequently ... dead.

Desperate to keep the standout cool factor of the Suunto range, I went back to the catalogue to find the unit that would overcome these problems - surely the really expensive ones had glass faces? Nope - 100% plastic across the range. Disappointment, thy name is Suunto.

Review Score:

Function: 7/10. While it held together (for 13 months), it proved to be an easily understood HRM. Unreadable, but easily understood. Battery life acceptable, and ability to change batteries in the watch and chest strap yourself highly prized.

Form: 2/10. Despite looking very cool in the box, life in the real world overwhelmed the Suunto - the plastic face became decrepit in no time, and then the screws that held the back in came out, rendering it ... dead.

Price: 3/10. Part of the reason for buying was the low price. I could buy 2 for the price of a Polar or similar unit in a mainstream brand. Then again, I would have to buy 2 (or in fact 3-4) if they have this lifespan.

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Eddy Merckx

2009-10-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

I've bought a lot of stuff on eBay over the years, particularly when it comes to restoring vintage racing bikes.

I think this postcard might count as the dodgiest thing I've ever obtained, 99% likely to be a simple reproduction (including the signature) - which is pretty much impossible to tell on the web, and hard enough to tell in the flesh in this era of digital printing. I've seen way too many of this card since with the signature in identical position!

That said, I didn't pay much and it celebrates The Cannibal in full racing pose on one of the 2 coolest racing bikes in history.

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Fausto Coppi Bianchi 1953 World Champion

2009-10-03T23:34:00.001-07:00

One of my bikes is a Fausto Coppi Lugano 53, a steel bike made in the 1990s to celebrate the great Fausto Coppis' world championship win in Switzerland in 1953.

Coincidentally, I also have a signed postcard (the signature on the back matches the sticker on the bike uncannily - I guess he autographed about a million things in his time!) celebrating his win in Switzerland.

Coppi also cleaned up the Giro that year, one of only a handful of cyclists ever to win a major tour and the Worlds in the same year. Chapeau!

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Fausto Coppi Emotonico 1946

2009-10-03T22:57:00.000-07:00

The story of Fausto Coppi has been written many times, and I've no need to try to outdo any of the authors.

When we were in Italy to see the 1995 Giro D'Italia, we found ourselves stuck in Florence on a quiet Sunday morning. We're read about a Sunday market in the hills nearby, with a bus that went to Fiesole, leaving only a 5km walk along country roads.

One of the treasures collected that day was some bike racing postcards from the 1940s and 1950s - plenty of the stall holders refused to sell us anything being foreigners, but somehow my passion for cycling won out.

This card dates from the period when Coppi was restarting his career after the war. As a prisoner in a low security environment he had enjoyed a small opportunity to get back on his bike, and came out of retirement with the minimum of sponsors, one of whom was Emotonico.

He won 3 stages of the Giro in 1945, competed in several other major races and his career, once in danger of being starved to death by the deprivations of life as a POW was reborn, with life on a major trade team.

Cocksure - Malcolm Gladwell on the Global Financial Crisis

2009-10-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

This story from the New Yorker is an excellent teaching tool for Australians and New Zealanders attempting to understand or explain the underlying causes of the GFC.

Speaking at a special conference in May, Gladwell, reflects on whether it was incompetence or overconfidence that tipped us all into 2008's recession, and has subsequently cost the US Government North of $5 trillion (so far) to try to dig their way out of the shit.

He uses the case of the British army, arriving at Gallipoli in April 1915 at the peak of their military powers - by far the superior combatant, but frittering away their advantage while they set up their battle 'governance' - ships offshore for the command, soldiers ashore with all the administrivia of the typical British Army battle setup being put in place before they attacked. Their confidence of victory was supreme.

Amazingly, this was after a shockingly failed naval attack on the Dardennelles, which had effectively telegraphed the British intention to invade 4 long weeks before the fateful late April beach assaults.

Infamously, on April 25th when the British command realised their cocksure attitude had just cost them the strategic advantage against an opposition perceived to be Turkish rabble with limited ammunition, they pressed the button and proceeded to sacrifice 44,000 Allied soldiers on the beaches and hillsides of Gallipoli, with 96,000 wounded. The Turkish army lost nearly 87,000 men, while the Anzacs had 11,000 casualties and 24,000 wounded.

The many ensuing battles at Gallipoli are ingrained in a generation of kiwis and Australians minds - in a way they were nation-forming, as they they were for modern Turkey.

New Yorker is kind enough to offer their embedding code to bloggers, so I encourage you to watch this video and then buy a copy of the New Yorker some time to encourage them along. The print industry needs all the help it can get these days!

It's not about the money - bogus taxes disguised as 'road safety' (again)

2009-10-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

Living in America I learned one important fact - the moment someone says "it's not about the money", they might as well go to the nearest whiteboard and write up in blue marker "actually, it's all about the money".

I've written before (perturbed of Port Melbourne?) about the money being made by the advertising and media industry from bogus anti-speeding advertising campaigns developed to allegedly prevent people speeding on Victorian roads (as opposed to cleansing the obvious tax raising nature of the speed cameras). Now the Victorian opposition have outed some further facts on the road safety impact of the massive increase in speed camera installations across Victoria (from a story by Clay Lucas in the Age, September 29, p3):

That would be nothing then.

$437m will be raised this year by the Victorian Government from speeding taxes, up from $397m last year. That buys a lot of government salaries and screwed up IT projects (don't even get me started) for Mr Brumby and his village improvement committee.

I suppose we should be delighted someone in Australia (other than the mining industry) can manage to grow their business in the Global Financial Crisis.

Click on the article to read the whole sorry thing.

Go forth and make your voluntary tax contributions, Victorians.

We know Agile rocks, but can Rock be Agile?

2009-09-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

If I learned nothing else this Winter, it was that the process of making music in a rock band is pretty damned spontaneous and collaborative - with changing requirements the whole time as singers come and go from rehearsals, too many guitarists of differing abilities attempt to play on the same songs, musical keys need transposing for different vocalists and instruments, and downloaded tabs proving to be largely misleading and mostly wrong.

Some of the funnier moments were when the riffing of our talented lead guitarists and bass player started to go awry (it happened occasionally), and cries of "Jazz!" would go up, seemingly a code word for 'over-wrought bullshit riffing going nowhere here". Or maybe it's just that Tad has a big black Fender Jazz bass?

To the newbie, some rehearsals seemed to confirm every stereotype of rock music (think Spinal Tap), and as the resident 'Nigel' I would occasionally start looking for tiny stonehenges descending from the ceiling of the warehouse. But there is a mojo about a rock band that is so tangible you could use it to keep the 7:30pm Pizza delivery warm while a troublesome vocal is ironed out.

With this in mind, with great trepidation I suggested a little experiment as we kicked off the Christmas/ Summer band this week. An Agile story board - with suggested songs on cards, prioritised at a standup before each rehearsal, building up the set-list and eliminating the cries of "what's next?" and "where's the vocalist for this one gone?"

Would this kill the band's mojo? Plenty of software developers claim Agile does, but they don't work for Lonely Planet ;-) They're using their 'mojo' to build crap code somewhere else.

I spend much of my day job devoted to implementing Agile Software Development at Lonely Planet, where the fundamental principles of managing the delivery of software in a socio-technical fashion have a lot of parallels to the way I observed our band working - particularly getting started and getting organised each Thursday night, but also ensuring close teamwork from a multi-disciplinary musical group, and regularly reviewing what works and what doesn't.

Needless to say there was hue and cry from the artists about "it's not ROCK!" and "you can't organise rock music!"

It's always a little hard to tell among a dozen good-natured Australians in the presence of 2 dozen Carlton Bitter precisely when you are having the piss taken out of you (sometimes easier just to assume 'all the time'). Anyway, I was saved from humiliation by the real musicians grabbing the tools (board, cards, microphone, pens - see the photo) and in a matter of minutes we had the priority song-list for the night.

Someone quickly suggested we add the vocalist's name to the card. No cards would get played if they didn't have the requisite MP3 track to listen to, the lyrics on paper, and Tabs. Some cards got prioritised downwards for when our ace drummer is able to join the team later in the year. A card even got put in the 'not to be developed' column (Dave, we miss you already).

I'm fairly certain when my personal mini-stonehenge arrives it will have 'Scrum-master Flash' or a similar witticism etched on it to remind me of the evening - but anyway, we used to try to organise the set-list on an Excel bloody spreadsheet. Even I can see that certainly is not Rock.

Google Goollery Recognition for Lesley Melody's Paintings

2009-09-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

A cool website bubbled to the surface of the blogosphere recently called Goollery.org. It features lots of different expressions of the way Google has changed our lives, many of them artistic, but lots of them practical and inspirational as well.

The great news is that Lesley's Google Earth paintings have been accepted to feature on the site - and there is the Heathrow one above. Such excitement - thanks Goollery!

The 2 paintings featured are in her current Gallery/Exhibition as Artist in Residence in Melbourne Central.

The Etape de Tour Saved My Life - lessons for cyclists (and others)

2009-09-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

The 10 things I learned from Open Heart Surgery

The afterword to the 5 part story of how a perfectly innocent doctor's signoff for an Etape de Tour bike race entry form revealed a collapsing aortic heart valve, resulting in 44 year old cyclist Nigel Dalton having open heart surgery in early 2008.

Feel free to make an appropriate hand gesture and go "well, duhhhhh!" at any of these:

You can find a way to keep riding bikes after open heart surgery - you do not have to give up your passion, or wrap yourself in cotton wool. Racing - probably not, and you should own the best protective gear possible plus carry some extra equipment (see part 5). Ride with friends who know what to do if there's a tumble, and avoid drafting complete strangers.
Not all serious health problems have visual, external symptoms. As a fit, active cyclist I had no symptoms at all for what should have been a debilitating condition. My heart took a year on drugs to shrink back to its normal size after surgery. Get an annual medical checkup. I'm talking to you guys out there, mostly.
$600 (about $300 after an Australian medicare rebate) spent on a full ECG and stress test is the best investment you can make in your cardiac health if you are in your 40s. Contact your GP or someone like the Victorian Heart Centre at Epworth Hospital in Melbourne. Don't piss around with this stuff, monitor your blood pressure at the very least.
Get a personal trainer with rehabilitation credentials (like Trewrehab) to manage your physical recovery program after big surgery. Being in a gym with all those athletes around will be much more motivating than being in a class sharing a few exercise bikes and tips on giving up smoking, and I think it's more likely you will avoid the dreaded cardiac depression.
If you're ever given the choice of suffering the acute embarrassment of an early in the evening pain-killing suppository by the pretty, charming blonde nurse with tiny, delicate fingers; or waiting until later that night so it doesn't wear off by 5am - take it early. I did, and the night nurse/former Soviet bloc weightlifter with fingers like a rolled up Saturday editions of the New York Times will never know my immense relief at that decision.
Do what you are passionate about before you suffer a major health problem, so that when you are questioning the meaning of your life afterwards (brought on largely by the avoidance of the opposite condition!), the answer comes fairly easily. Hopefully it was "doing what I am already doing" as I was lucky to discover.
It took me 12 months to recover fitness after open heart surgery (valve replacement). They'll tell you 3 months so as not to depress you, but don't count on it. See item 9 as the corollary to this lesson.
After 2 months, whilst you feel so much better, you are not back to normal. Beta blockers (like Sotalol in my case, to prevent cardiac arrhythmia), anti-coagulants (Warfarin), Panadol and the healing process will combine in ways you never imagined to make some job requirements as a Manager almost impossible. You NEED high blood pressure to 'pop' new ideas from that brain! Get more sleep as you are learning to listen to a whole new set of signals from your body as to what 'tired' and 'enough' are
It does get better every single day. Celebrate that.
Hug your family every day (and your friends whenever you can) because there is a chance in this world you might not see them tomorrow.

The Etape de Tour Saved My Life - part 5

2009-08-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

50 Rides to do Before You Die - suggested recovery reading for open heart surgery patients.

The final chapter in the story of how a perfectly innocent medical certificate signoff for an Etape de Tour bike race entry form revealed a collapsing aortic heart valve, resulting in 44 year old cyclist Nigel Dalton having open heart surgery in early 2008.

Part 4 was here if you missed it.

The last days at Epworth Cardiology Unit had involved some excruciating rehab sessions. The physical stuff involved rolling and coughing, 2 things you really don't want to do with dozens of stitches in your chest. All that caused was physical pain however. The counselling was far worse, having to sit through textbook learning sessions, including the aforementioned 'resuming sexual activity' and discussions about giving up cigarettes, fatty foods, and other vices.

Seeing my keenness to leave, and frustration that my INR levels were not coming up quickly enough, I received some great advice - 'dress like you are already home'. Not only did it take me out of my 'pyjama'd patient' frame of mind, it clearly altered the perception of the professionals for the better. I loved the look on nurses' faces when they came in to check on me and found a shaven, well-dressed visitor instead - "so where is he?" they'd chime. "That would be me" I'd reply, smiling at the deception.

Finally running again (for a couple of minutes), with Adam Martin at Trewrehab in late July 2008

All of this left me determined to take a different approach to my rehabilitation. 'Healthy grocery shopping' is not a subject that needs much study when you live in a gluten-free, no dairy household anyway.

My descent from a high level of fitness (brought about by long miles on the bike) to pathetic zombie shuffling around Middle Park shops (quickly followed by exhaustion) was shocking and complete. Every ounce of my body's energy was being absorbed into the healing process, the organs trying to settle back into position and wounds heal. It was all I could do to keep up with the weekly blood test cycle as my Warfarin dose was perfected to a healthy INR range.

My magazine pile for the recovery. Robbo delighted in sending me Procycling's
50 Rides To Do Before You Die with a bookmark on page 46 - the Tourmalet in the Pyrenees where
I should have been climbing in the Etape de Tour on 6 July 2008.

Initial estimates of how long it would be before I recovered to a level of fitness I had enjoyed before were all suspiciously short. Three months, maybe four. It just didn't seem right from where I stood - I was still stuffed walking up the stairs at home.

I finally twigged as to what was going on - as the Adam's Heart Valve Surgery blog notes, the onset of depression following cardiac surgery is epidemic, and is counted one of the most significant side-effects. Nobody was going to tell me 'be patient, it'll take a year' for fear of sending me into depression and examining the meaning of life. So let me offer other sporty open heart surgery patients some advice - be patient, it will probably take a year.

I found that I was having out of body experiences, watching me unable to open the marmalade jar (left and right sides of your body being joined together at the sternum has all sorts of strange benefits you might not have considered!), and shuffling at tragic pace to the tram, then 100m down to the Albert Park Medical Centre for a checkup in the weeks after surgery.

I felt 90 years old.

The only major pain I was suffering was in the 2 places where the operation invaded my muscles - the twin drain tubes for the chest cavity which were routed through the diaphragm and out the abdominals; and my neck where the matrix-like spider device had been connected. Despite the occasionally frightening 'click', the chest bone was no real source of discomfort. My utter sympathies go out to those recovering from cesareans or radical surgery like mastectomies - that would be the definition of pain.

My first assessment at Trewrehab was 2 May. Getting past the usual BS "but you must be feeling so much better these days" was not an issue - Adam had met me before the operation and could see the demolition job the surgery had done on me. We scheduled my first session for 6 May, with a clear goal of getting back on the bike in July, for at least a short ride around Albert Park.

With a 'program' and surrounded by fit athletes I never had time to feel sorry for myself. The beta blockers were leaving me in a daze, but they were gone by the end of July. Some people stay on those forever! The arrhythmia that had seen me condemned to these damned pills was a fairly frightening experience, my heart rate racing out of control to 180 bpm whilst lying quietly in a hospital bed trying to be zen and stay calm.

We visited my surgeon Peter Skillington on 29 May - he had a strong message for me - for god's sake slow down! He was not thrilled I was aiming to resume cycling, having recently attended to a cycling buddy who had come off second best with a parked car descending a hill in the suburbs. I examine every one of these tales with an eye to the avoidability, what could have the cyclist done differently to miss the crash altogether.

My cycling buddies won't thank me for this, but I suspect that many accidents are avoidable if you assume homicidal intent on all car and truck drivers' behalf, and that a surprise lurks behind every intersection or parked or stationary car. It's a tactic I've been using for 30 years on my motorcycle.

I assembled a "Warfarin-special' first aid kit with the help of the local pharmacist (someone you'll get to know well) to ride with that includes cold compress (to reduce bruising); antiseptic powder, antiseptic wound cleaning pads; tape; stretch bandages; and wound covers. It fits in an airline toilet bag in my middle pocket at the back of most cycling jerseys.

I wear a Medic Alert bracelet and a fancy ICE necklace with a built in USB device that holds records of my medical condition. My colleague Mark, who is also a CFA volunteer in the rural fringes of Melbourne, assures me if he attends any bike crash I'm in that it'll make a nice souvenir as they're not due laptops in their vehicles until about 2019. Ah well...

As my INR settled into an acceptable range, I made the big decision to avoid alcohol entirely. Simplify, simplify, simplify. That NZ Pinot Noir Lesley and I had drunk on the day of discovering my faulty aortic valve was a fitting departure point for a lifetime's enjoyment of fine wine and beer.

The surgery and the recovery period that followed brought some surprising benefits - once I got fit enough to walk, I was able to spend a lot of daylight time with our 7 year old boy that high pressure corporate Dads just don't get these days. I was very sad to go back to work and lose the thrill of dropping Noah off and picking him up, sharing a pie at Annabels in Albert Park before guitar lessons, and a joke about the day's schoolwork.

Now, in September 2009, I ride most weekends, have turned rehab at the gym into a weekly personal training session with Adam (which I am thoroughly addicted to), am back to full speed at work and enjoying it more than ever.

I made a list of things that looks a lot like that great cliche 'the bucket list', the first of which I have already ticked off - playing in the Lonely Planet Band at the Espy in June this year. Little things bring memories flooding back - the anniversary of my operation which is now my second birthday; and Paris-Roubaix will always be special to me now.

Which, to circle back to the start of this 5 part epic, sounds like a bloody good reason to go to Europe and knock off a couple of those 50 rides before we die.

Note: if you'd like to read about how Robbo and Slim's trip to the 2008 Etape de Tour went, it's all documented on the Robertson Communications blog here. There are times I think Slim drew the short straw! Here's Dave climbing Hautacam with 10km to go.

The Etape de Tour Saved My Life - part 4

2009-08-29T05:04:00.000-07:00

Open Heart Surgery - what's that ticking noise?

The continuing story of how a perfectly innocent doctor's signoff for an Etape de Tour bike race entry form revealed a collapsing aortic heart valve, resulting in 44 year old cyclist Nigel Dalton having open heart surgery in early 2008.

Part 3 was here if you missed it. It'll make much more sense if you read the earlier ones first!

For a cyclist, one of the most annoying noises on their bike is an unexplained ticking. Seat post? Seat? Bottom bracket? Chain? Cluster? Tooth on one sprocket? Spoke? Freewheel? Dry inner cable? Head bearing? Tick Tick Tick - you sit, you stand, you ride with one leg, it's annoying enough to have you issued a severe ticket for poor bike maintenance and be banished to the back of the bunch.

The worst bikes are Cannondales (which I have) - with large diameter aluminium tubing, the slightest noise is amplified to rifle shot intensity. It's a certain ride home on your own.

When I woke from open heart surgery, there was so much noise around me that the proximity of a loud, regular ticking did not completely register at first. Intensive Care (ICU) is an amazing place - a pressure cooker of medicine, groans, coughs, the occasional shriek, sounds of life, death and dozens of machines that go 'ping'.

You've just emerged from a 6-8 hour period of lying inert on an operating table, worked on by some of the smartest people on the planet - which by the way, if your interest overcomes your squeamishness, then I recommend a BBC documentary called Blood and Guts, where the episode called 'Bleeding Hearts' starts and ends with a woman undergoing an aortic valve transplant like mine.

Patient focus is complete - 2 people at your bedside, no more than a dozen patients in the ward. The ritual of emerging from open heart surgery is well practised - as the BBC web page notes - you have just been is cooled until your brain stopped, and then had all of your blood sucked out, major heart parts replaced, then stitched up and revived.

Which is not a great scene for your loved ones to walk in on (by the way). Naturally keen to see me after 8 hours of zombified 'shopping', Lesley received the shock of her life to find me cold and lifeless in ICU. She returned for a second attempt later on, when I started to show signs of consciousness. Even then she was forced to leave, seeing me emerge from the anaesthetic and struggling to communicate that I thought I was ready to have the breathing tube out.

I'd been suitably warned about this process - I'd wake up with an uncomfortable, fixed breathing tube down my throat and into my lungs. Strict instructions were to not panic, be zen about it (rather than trying to rip out this murderous tube that was choking you, because after a moment's reflection, it obviously isn't!). The moment it starts to frustrate the patient is correlated strongly with the moment they are ready to breath on their own - it's just tricky spotting the right moment.

With tube removed, it was bizarrely comforting to be in a safe place again. It was done. The next voice I recall hearing was the utterly business-like and pragmatic surgeon saying "Nigel, the human donor valve didn't work, the aorta was too damaged, so we've fitted a mechanical valve instead."

"Oh", I thought. Not "oh shit", just "oh'. Nothing I can do about it now ... guess I'm going to find out all about life on the dreaded Warfarin.

That would also explain the incredibly loud ticking in my ears.

The other thing Swee Seow and the team had briefed me well on was that life would get better every day after surgery - with the bar starting pretty low in Intensive Care. The full horror of ICU swam into view as my consciousness steadily returned over the next day.

I was connected to a dozen machines, one via a spider-like robotic device on my neck that had several tubes descending into parts of my heart and chest cavity. I had drains from my chest cavity exiting below my rib cage, wires in a similar position ready to jump-start the heart at a moment's notice, the inevitable catheter, drips and monitoring equipment. My bed-head looked like the Lonely Planet server room and it greatly reminded me of the Monty Python 'miracle of birth' sketch from the The Meaning of Life.

Fact #1: sleep in ICU is near impossible. I passed the first night listening to the ever increasing anger and frustration of the night nurse with an elderly gentlemen recovering from an emergency bypass he'd been admitted for that day. He was trying to tear out his breathing tube before he'd fully gained use of his lungs, and even the threat of being returned to full sedation didn't help. That was solved about 2am when another nurse twigged that he spoke no English, and her Italian language skills came to the fore to calm him down.

Fact #2: it's crazy in there. My immediate neighbour up and died, signaled by the wailing of relatives and rapid closing of curtains. At the end of the room, another woman was yelling out she needed more pain killers - the morphine talking as it happened. All the time, machines, machines, machines - alarms going off, pinging, dinging, a cacophony that chased away any attempt at rest.

Being judged ready to leave ICU and then being wheeled to Ward 6 was the best day of my life. The removal of the really complicated tubes took hours, with the nurse constantly called away, and in no apparent hurry to get it wrong when she came back.

Back on Ward 6 the relative improvement from machine purgatory was immense. The first night I managed to sleep - almost right through. It was less than a month since my failed ECG and Stress Test. I had moved to a beautiful room (seen here with family trying everything out) with all the mod cons.

The pain was also less than I'd expected. Being younger than my average ward colleague by about 30 years, I was warned to expect more chest pain (traded off with a faster recovery). Thankfully, sternums have few nerve endings around them, so sawing them down the middle is manageable on the milder stuff (God bless Panadol). I had one night on Morphine, with dreams so bizarre and frightening you'd have to be a registered clinical psychologist before I shared them.

Both my father and Uncle Lawrence had heart bypasses, and advised that the back pain where the ribs are leveraged open at the 'hinges' had troubled them. I'd got ahead of that one with 2 weeks of massage and stretching to that area before the operation.

The most painful moment was to be revealed much later, on the morning of leaving.

By the 12th I was primed for the big hurdles to leave the hospital.

Getting my Warfarin dose under control and a stable INR that showed my blood was now thinned down enough to run through the plastic and metal enhancements to my aorta.
Attending the rehab program, including wincing our way through "resuming sexual activity" and 'heart-smart shopping' with a group of 70-something year olds who have just had triple bypasses.
Climbing the 22 steps to the next floor of the hospital

Because we hadn't talked much about the mechanical valve option, I was totally shocked at the noise in my head from the ticking. Dr Seow could read my eyes when I brought it up - "it's a really good one, I can't even hear it from here" he said as he stood 2 metres away with his usual wry sense of humour. "Tell you what, you ring me when it stops ticking ok?"

The aorta splits the high pressure blood across several delivery routes - one of which is the Carotid artery to the brain, via the ear. That's the pulse you can hear at night sometimes, so you shift your head and it goes away. With me, not only can I hear it all the time, you can hear the metallic click of the valve closing as well. It's a great party trick.

By Day 3 I was well enough to starting to think that cycling with a mechanical heart valve was out of the question.

The effect of Warfarin is to thin your blood, which has a corollary of making you bleed more easily. A bike crash at 30 km/h might see you lose some skin, ripping your lycra outfit and getting some bruising. For me, it's a debacle. Once the bleeding has stopped, I have to wonder where internally I'm also leaking blood. And the bruises can be monumental. A decent whack on the head and I'm done for, whereas you're probably just seeing a few stars.

It was clearly visibly upsetting me - would this whole journey that started with the the greatest of good fortune delivered by my bike, end with me never riding again?

When I received a seemingly random,unplanned visit from one of the technical heads of the Cardiac Ward, I'd hidden all the bike magazines and resigned myself to losing my most favoured pastime. I would never see the Pyrenees on a bike. Turned out he was a cyclist too, and we talked about our riding and how great it was to be on the roads around Victoria. To be really alive. Half an hour later he waved goodbye, magazines in hand, and I resolved never to give up riding - to find a way to reduce the risk, and manage if a crash occurred. Not long after, Swee poked his head around the door, waved and winked. Cardiologist and Psychologist it would seem.

In a 'patients behaving badly' reality TV moment that only cyclists would appreciate, I realised that night that SBS were playing the Paris-Roubaix race live, finishing about 2am. With a room to myself, I hatched a plot to fight off the effects of the nightly sleeping pill and celebrate my love of cycling by watching right through. It was an awesome race, but in hindsight must have set my healing process back a bit!

This only left 2 mountains to crest - the first climbing to level 7 of the hospital building, a mere 22 steps away but the hurdle put in front of all patients before they can leave. I trained whenever possible, shuffling laps of the floor, confident at the start and always stunned at my exhaustion, flopping back into bed to recover. When the hour came, I thought of the 18km of climbing on the Tourmalet in the Etape de Tour that I had signed up for so long ago, and fairly flew up the stairs.

Second mountain went unanticipated until the morning of the 15th of April when my INR levels finally became stable. Provided I removed the incredible bandage that sealed up the 25cm chest wound (now healed - blood supply to this area being pretty immense) before I left, I was free to go home. Having had a complete body shave, how hard could that be?

The nurse started to peel up one corner and the problem became immediately obvious. The hair had grown back over the week, and embedded itself in the bandage material (semi transparent in the picture, just showing some of the original iodine yellow tinges). She quickly found herself called away, suggesting I get started on it in the shower perhaps. The same shower that had not penetrated this high-tech elastoplast from hell in the last 5 days...

Catherine, who was visiting from NZ to take some of the load at home off Lesley, hid in the bathroom. I lay on the bed in its lowest position, and hung onto the rails. Lesley, grabbing the painstakingly lifted 5mm corner of the bandage braced herself against the bed and did her worst.

Body-shaves, fear, shock, loss, indignity, injury, ticking, morphine fueled psychoses, horror, the embarrassment of suppositories, stress, 2am heart racing episodes, early morning eastern-bloc blood snatchers, death, machines, alarms, pain, frustration, the whole goddamned injustice of having open heart surgery at 44 combined with the joy of being alive came screaming out of my lungs as the bandage came away in one fell swoop.

With what appeared to be a piece of stubbled pigskin in her hand, Lesley rushed to calm me as I laughed so hard I might split my sides. Literally, perhaps.

My new best friends - the daily rituals of Coversyl (arterial and muscle flexibility around aorta) and Warfarin. Also pictured is my ICE necklace I wear when cycling.

The Etape de Tour Saved My Life - part 3

2009-08-29T01:21:00.000-07:00

How to spend $50,000 on titanium components and have everyone feel good about it.

The continuing story of how a perfectly innocent medical certificate signoff for an Etape de Tour bike race entry form revealed a collapsing aortic heart valve, resulting in 44 year old cyclist Nigel Dalton having open heart surgery in early 2008.

Part 2 was here if you missed it. It'll all make much more sense if you read the earlier ones first.

The 3 weeks between diagnosis with a failing aortic valve and dangerously enlarged heart muscle (March 12, 2008) and being admitted to Epworth Hospital for open heart surgery (April 7) flew by in a blur.

I found myself awake at 2am on more than one occasion, looking out from our house on Canterbury Road with that clarity of vision that is the fabled gift for those facing their maker.

What kind of dumb crazy luck had caused me to enter the first bike race in my life to require a medical certificate for entry, triggering a trip to a GP who just happened to pick my symptoms as worthy of a second opinion from a cardiac specialist, who had caught me weeks or months from certain expiry?

How could I be suffering no symptoms? I ran 3 stories up to the Lonely Planet cafe 2 steps at a time most days, with not a hint of breathlessness or chest pain. I was riding well over a hundred kilometres a week.

I wish I could say the artistic photographs I took whilst sitting there were as lucid - though apparently, my time was not up yet.

Looking at my Palm Treo with my work calendar was very disorienting - 'Nigel Sick' it said (code words to enable meeting cancellations while my life was sorted out). I was never sick! Sick is for other people. I dwelled on the ignominy of not even being able to say "I feel so much better nowadays" after surgery.

My angiogram on 26 March clued me in to what I was about to experience as a hospitalised human being. A relatively simple day procedure, it was a gentle introduction to Ward 6 at Epworth. How they work out where a long wire goes from your groin to your heart, and drive it down all the cardiac alleyways by remote control beats the hell out of me. I was pretty embarrassed having 8 people work on my groin, most of them sassy, good-looking young medical professionals, teasing each other about their footy teams. It was like being on House.

The results came through clear, and I was confirmed as a good candidate for a Ross Procedure to be undertaken by Peter Skillington.

The bruising left by the angiogram gave me a spectacular groin - coloured not dissimilar to my attempts at artistic photographic expression above! Now a 'born again' fanatic of the General Practitioner I raced to show John the result, fearing I'd suffered something untoward. He sent me home reassured, though I think the scale of the bruise did impress him somewhat!

I was now off the bike completely (angiogram induced groin injuries included!), venturing out for walks was the most athletic excursion I dared to do. I paced out some recovery strolls for when I came home and I'd need to walk every day as part of the rehabilitation process. On April 1st I went to visit the Trewrehab team at the MSAC facility near home in Albert Park.

That was a critical moment in the whole process, when I look back in reflection. Recommended by a friend, the choice of a private, gym-based rehab program over the hospital program put me straight into a mind-space that was great for recovery. More on that later anyway.

The last decent training ride around the hills (and gravel roads) of Alexandra and Eildon, Victoria

The other critical moment was the way Lonely Planet treated me as an employee. If you suffer what I did, pray you have an employer like mine in your corner. I'd tried to be staunch and head back in the day after the discovery (March 13th). I gritted my teeth through the walk to HR to outline the facts, and barely managed to blurt out "it's bad.." before collapsing in fits of tears.

The facts were upsetting, but not on the scale of my reaction. It was plain, old fashioned shock, which had taken 18 hours to set in, and among the people I spend most of my waking life with (which is kindof a sad reflection of modern life, but...) I felt it all collapse in on me. To have suffered zero symptoms, and be dropped from a great height into the 'gravely ill' bucket was too big a transformation for 18 hours.

It set in train an amazing backstop for me, knowing that my job was covered at a critical time on a critical website project, and that time off work would not be an issue. I went home that morning, and apart from a trip back to have lunch with a few of the team, I focused entirely on achieving a sense of health that would get me through the operation. I thank them all.

Google was a good friend in this preparation time as well. Through it I found an amazing blog called Adams Heart Valve Surgery Blog, complete with a book the blogger had written covering pretty much every question that was arising in my mind about open heart surgery.

The author had been through almost exactly what I was expecting to experience. His Ross procedure went smoothly, and I was able to read (actually wince through) snippets of detail on a regular basis before being somewhat overcome by the discomfort of knowing all this was about to happen 'at a store near you'. The power of a blog where people could share stories and get advice from others with their particular age, health and life circumstances was amazing. I still read this blog today.

Being 44, fit and with no major vices I was high on the list for a donated heart valve. I learnt that many of Australia's heart valves come from deceased people who have had brushes with the law (terminal brushes with the law in fact), and a disproportionate number of their families make an effort to balance the world by giving the ultimate gift.

It would have to be a crappy conversation to have as a medical professional, to ask a family if they would donate body parts that can save other people's lives, when the worst news possible about the failure to save the life of your loved one has only been delivered minutes before. Solve it now everyone - sign up for a donor card NOW.

Anyway, I was about to get a little bit of Australian in my heart.

One thing the reading about Ross Procedures gave me was a 'thank goodness I'm not going mechanical' attitude, and the drug Warfarin seemed like a lifelong habit that was worth avoiding. This would come back to haunt me in a couple of weeks.

The bureaucracy of major surgery also had to be battled. With GP, surgeon, cardiologist and hospital all lined up, my Health Insurance company HBA now needed to be consulted. Crap! April 8, the scheduled day of surgery was 3 weeks short of my stand-down period for major surgery, having only arrived in the country in April 2007. Panic! This is a $50,000 operation.

Too often all we read about insurance companies is their faceless inhumanity, with business plans and 'shareholder-value' strategies where their mission becomes to turn down every claim possible on technicalities, or stretch people out for long periods of suffering. Not HBA folks - they could not have been better. I spruik them without conscience to anyone I meet now. They approved the surgery in record time, recognising the need (and opportunity) to move quickly.

Thus, on Monday April 7, at lunchtime I checked in to the Epworth hospital (checked in is right, it's a lot like a hotel in a lot of ways), hung my dignity on a peg in my locker and lay back to read bicycle magazines and meet the team who would do the surgery.

I'd never even known the existence of a Perfusionist before. Apparently if you finish top of the class in anesthesia school, you stand a tiny chance of being selected into the inner circle of specialists who keep your blood circulating when a heart is stopped for open heart surgery. I was speechless - the final point of a week in which I reflected that I had grown quieter every day, withdrawing into the inevitability of it all.

The dreaded 100% body shaving exercise was entertaining. It didn't happen until about 8 at night, when the dayshift person doing it had long left and the after hours substitute was called out especially for me.

Ironically, he was about the hairiest person I had ever seen, and with minimal English he managed to communicate that he was deeply puzzled that my legs were already shaven ("cycling, shaving, go together, go faster ..."). Three sets of clippers later (all blunt from a day's hard work) and all the possible conversation exhausted, I took the iodine shower and retired, suitably yellow, to watch my last TV for a couple of days.

I might be lurid yellow, but there was no chickening out now.

The Etape de Tour Saved My Life - Part 2

2009-08-28T05:17:00.000-07:00

Quite the cycling injury - and the mother of all registered niggles.

The continuing story of how a perfectly innocent medical certificate signoff for an Etape de Tour bike race entry form revealed a collapsing aortic heart valve, resulting in 44 year old cyclist Nigel Dalton having open heart surgery in early 2008.

Part 1 was here if you missed it.

That little scar, is what is referred to among the cycling fraternity as a 'registered niggle' - a certified (among your mates, bugger the UCI) excuse to perform poorly while racing or training. It's no use complaining after a ride about the injury you were carrying or feeling poorly, you have to register the problem in advance.

The photo is the only shot I have of the 'ouchy bit' as my little friend Harrison Rowe would say. Then again, if you did read Part 1, I have jumped ahead for dramatic effect. We left me in the waiting room at the Victorian Cardiac Centre at the Epworth Hospital in Richmond, confident of setting a new record on the treadmill stress test and having a medical certificate signed off the very next day for last minute submission to the good people of Bikestyle Tours.

Being a busy place, the cardiac nurse got me shaved in small circles where the electrodes needed to go, stripped down and lying on the bed with all manner of electrodes attached for the ECG part of the test. There's 3 parts to this test - the scan (like a baby ultrasound, but of your chest); the ECG where they measure all the electrical charges that make your heart work in a regular fashion; and the treadmill test, where the heart's response to exercise (aka stress) can be viewed using ECG and ultrasound scanning.

With wires attached, she brought up the first pictures up on screen. Despite the strange circumstances, imagine I'm managing to maintain my 50-something rest pulse and composure for being half-naked in a cold room. Within 30 seconds the nurse picked up the phone and asked for someone to come in as soon as possible. Within 30 seconds of their arrival, they are in turn, calling for Doctor Seow.

Their collective (but hushed) "ohhhhhh, very clear..." as the screen is flicked to a mode that allows blood flows to stand out among the muscular grey blur of the ultrasound. Dr Swee Seow, who has clearly been in this situation before, turns to give me the news.

"Your GP, who is he? He's a pretty smart fellow - I've not known a GP to diagnose so accurately a problem. Why did you see him again - out of breath? Feeling faint all the time? Bad chest pains?"

"A bike race entry form ..." I managed to utter - the cool, composed, cyclist evaporating fast. Not a common symptom of heart problems apparently. I explained the Etape de Tour as best you can in such circumstances - France, hard to enter, months of training, big mountains...

"Sooooo ... you booked your ticket yet?"

It wouldn't be the last time that Swee's humour carried me through an awkward moment in the next few months. Swee explained how when a heart valve malfunctions by not closing properly, high pressure blood leaks back into the aorta, quite often causing that side of the heart to swell as it copes with the extra work loaded on the 'exit' chamber of the pumping mechanism. And that in my case, it was a valve in very bad shape, severe regurgitation, and severe swelling of the heart muscle.

Thus I needed surgery urgently. Major surgery, cut open the chest cavity, risky and complex surgery. Surgery you see on TV and look away from. Surgery that happens to other people.

Flabbergasted, I lay there thinking "that wasn't supposed to happen" (I work in IT, that is a common phrase at the time of disaster). "Come on then" says Swee, "we've got a stress test to finish". I looked at him like he was a murderous madman - treadmill? After that diagnosis? You have to be joking!

As it happens, a good set of data from the stress test is vital in the process of assessing the problem (in particular the health of the heart muscle overall), so with mind and heart racing I took the treadmill to Level 5 as I had long anticipated, feeling no ill effects from exercise as usual, and the scans were completed.

Swee's plan was to engage Peter Skillington to try a procedure he was world-renowned for called the Ross Procedure, where the patient's own valve on the 'low pressure' side of the heart is substituted for the highly stressed aortic valve. The pulmonary valve is then substituted with a human donor valve.

The alternative would likely be a mechanical valve, as being of middle years, I'd need it to run for perhaps 40 years (here's hoping!) and they were highly reliable. The downside of mechanical was the need to take Warfarin for life, a blood coagulation controller. With thin blood, there are things you think twice about doing. Like cycling.

Swee would contact Peter and my GP immediately, schedule an angiogram, while I was to work out health insurance details, what do to with my job, and get ready for a lifestyle change. Two months minimum off-work, probably three.

A bit dazed, I dressed and left the hospital. I txted work to say I wasn't coming in that afternoon, and rode home. I walked round to the local wine shop, bought the most expensive bottle of NZ Pinot Noir they had (knowing it quite likely would be one of the last I'd enjoy), two Reidel glasses, and opened it in preparation for Lesley arriving home.

After breaking the news at home - needless to say I lacked Swee's calm bedside manner - I called my parents (who were already booked to come over after Easter weekend for a visit), and rang Robbo to register the mother of all cycling niggles.

That night I also sent the following email off to Bikestyle:

Dear Natalie, Had a bit of a shocking day. A routine stress test for my Etapes entry form medical signoff turned into a drama - it turns out I have a heart murmur, the aortic valve is not working correctly and I need open heart surgery to replace the valve as soon as possible. My fitness has apparently been disguising the defect for a while. This is not the outcome I was expecting from today! I have a good friend, with a racing license who I have asked if he will take my entry for me. Though shocked, he's considering it and will let me know tomorrow. He lives in Milan, so is on a different time zone. We should be able to pull together the necessary paperwork quite quickly via email and fax to you. Strange day for me, please let me know if this is going to be an issue to enter Andrew instead of myself. Regards (I'm not quite up to 'cheers' this afternoon) Nigel

Dave quickly decided he would make the France trip in celebration of our stated mission in life to record many more epic tales of cycling days out, and with luck Slim was now going to ride the Etape in my place.

I would have a different Tourmalet to climb.

The Etape de Tour Saved My Life - part 1

2009-08-28T04:17:00.000-07:00

This is the finest piece of cycling equipment I possess.

How I came to have it installed is an interesting story - of incredible good luck, of incredible bad luck, and how by attempting to fulfill a dream borne of a longtime friendship and a shared passion for bike riding I cheated certain death at the roadside, on top of the Tourmalet.

The tale began in Autumn 2007 with the visit of friends from NZ, coming to Melbourne to stay with us in our ramshackle bikeshed of a dwelling, half demolished, leaking but spacious for 2 families.

Apart from the usual tourist gigs, David and I also managed a Sunday ride around the Dandenongs, following a course pointed out to me by my colleagues at Lonely Planet as the loop to undertake across from the 1 in 20 and back via the Silvan Reservoir, Mt Evelyn and the Hors Categorie Inverness Road climb.

The ride turned into something of an epic day out, which Dave has documented on his blog, one of those rides where you start to worry a little whether the cramps being endured are going to let you get home, and how a mistake in navigation could be quite costly in the cold and rain.

Dave was forced to ride my vintage Fausto Coppi, with pretty average bottom end Campy groupo. The tyres were hissing and sprayed rivers as he bombed past me descending the other side of the 'Nongs, bravely braking deep into the bush-clad corners he had never seen in his life before.

We missed the vital turn at Inverness Road (thank God) and climbed the Tourist Road instead, making it feasible for me to stay on my bike the whole way, then rolled along the tops before descending like madmen to the car at the Basin. Coffee was ordered in the posh suburban tea-rooms and our eyes glowed with the joy of surviving a mad day out.

With the rain soon forgotten, talk turned to finding some more epic rides to do, and how jaded we were of the annualised Round Taupo, Round the Bay 'rinse and repeat' nature of our cycling. So when I picked up a cycling magazine in June and saw that Australian based Bikestyle Tours were accepting entries for the 2008 Etape de Tour I threw caution to the wind and laid down the credit card immediately for 2 entries.

To my amazement I was emailed back with the news I was first in the queue, and that while official entry forms would not be released until December, I was assured of participation.

I gingerly phoned Dave.

The psychic connection had already been at work - he was absolutely committed. With a a scientific power based training program developed by our mate Smiley from his company Performance Labs HC in California aimed at the NZ National Age Group road title, he would be well prepared for a mere 165km around the Pyrenees in a year or so.

That gave me the jitters somewhat, as I had nothing like that planned as a training regime. My planning centred around a new bike and a triple crankset!

Entry forms finally arrived before Christmas, with a submission deadline in March 2009. My training started in earnest with the Victorian summer, even managing a few hill rides including a trip back to the Dandenongs with Kleppie where he introduced me to the dreaded Inverness climb to the top of Mount Dandenong. Horrible as it was, I rode the whole way and was rapt.

Christmas in NZ, a trip to the UK and USA for work, the start to the new 2008 year was busy. I wasn't stressed about training, which was planned to begin in earnest on return from overseas. The other complex details of planning a trip to a foreign country to race bikes were falling into place with alarming efficiency. Bike riding buddy Glen had a lifelong mate Jay who lived only an hour from the race start in Pau, providing the opportunity to turn this into a multi-family holiday in a beautiful part of the world.

In the following weeks I rode an early morning speed trial from Melbourne to Flinders in the hot Victorian winds, and when farm-staying near Alexandra in late February completed an epic ride through the hilltops of Eildon climbing relentlessly all morning.

All of this, with no knowledge of the ticking time-bomb in my chest.

Dave and I had joked about the entry form and the pain in the ass requirement for a medical sign-off. "Too many fat Englishmen having heart attacks on the climbs" we laughed. Dave was slightly worried he would be prejudiced by his Type 1 Diabetes, but since cycling was part of the management of that, and his race results were exemplary, we figured there would be no hurdle to getting a GP's signature in the box.

The key phrase was 'fit to take part in cycling races'. Huh, it was an insult to us.

Finally, on February 25, 2008, with the deadline for submission of the entry form looming, I booked a session with the local GP at the Albert Park Medical Centre to get my form signed. Having not seen a doctor for more than a dozen years, enjoying fantastic health and racing bikes all that time, I was slightly nervous but accepting of the need to follow the process. I needed this box signing!

John, having recognised me as the sort of bloke who would probably happily avoid doctors for another 12 years, booked me in for a set of standard blood tests, stamped the form, then putting it (unsigned) on his desk came round to check my blood pressure.

My blood pressure was weird. 165/60. He checked again. "Probably nothing" he reassured, "but since you're over 40, and seem so averse to visiting we people of the medical profession, I'm sending you for a stress test with one of the best people I know up at Epworth".

My heart sank. How was I possibly going to make the March 15 deadline for posting the entry form if I had to undergo that bloody bureaucracy? It could be a waiting list of weeks - this isn't just any old bike race, we were dead lucky to get entries, it's the easiest the course has been in years, and everything is worked out for the trip!

I rang the Victorian Heart Centre at Epworth immediately, begging for an early test date. Best they could fit me in was Wednesday March 12th, in the afternoon. Weeks away!

That afternoon, I emailed Natalie at Bikestyle with the following message:

Dear Natalie,

Just a quick note to let you know not to panic that my entry form hasn't reached you yet.

Training is proceeding well, but my doctor has decided I should do a Treadmill Stress Test, for which the vacancy is 12 March. I'll turn the results around in time to get them to you for the 15th.

Talk about fussy - this more than doubles the cost of entry! Doctors with Google on their office desk are a pain - a quick look at Etapes convinced him he needed his conscience covering.

Cheers

Natalie emailed back:

Thanks Nigel.

Its good to have an attentive Doctor.

Natalie

I spent the next few weeks stomping around moaning about 'bloody doctors' and the need to get my blood pressure down to ensure my entry went through. Kleppie kindly offered to sit the treadmill test for me, which given his gazelle physique and ability to climb the Dandenongs (and hoover donuts afterwards) seemed like a fine idea - but my conscience got the better of me.

Three little words in scrawly handwriting on the referral got the better of me too. "Possible systolic murmur". Googling it gave me a couple of momentary panics that something serious might be lurking, and that a regime of aspirins might ensue, but how bad could that be? A stressful job and a family history of heart disease pretty much assured me of some arterial tax to be paid in my life, but I was confident that at 44, my fitness and diet were serving me well.

When the 12th finally rolled around, I rode the KTM690 to Epworth and parked out front. Sitting in the waiting room for the ECG/Stress test filling in the forms, I surveyed my fellow outpatients. Not exactly the picture of health - some needing post-surgical ECGs, others clearly taxed by a lifetime of cigarettes and obesity.

I arrogantly wondered what the output record was on the treadmill test, and checked my diary as to what time I was due back in my next meeting back at Lonely Planet.

Continues in part 2.

My Shelfari Bookshelf

2009-08-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Movie Review: Live Forever

2009-08-21T05:46:00.001-07:00

So that's what happened in the 1990s.

I think when our little boy Noah asks the inevitable "what was it like last century Dad?", I will likely give him this DVD to watch. Provided DVD players still exist by the time he gets cheeky enough to ask such a question.

If I remember correctly, the 1970s were basically an oil crisis with rock music, the 1980s were an economic crisis accompanied by punk rock music, and the 1990s were a decade of better things, with at last some hope for the future.

The internet, mobile phones, cheap air travel, and the joy of being thirty-something.

Live Forever, the rise and fall of Britpop (made in 2003) tells the story of the UK before the year 2000 with a narrative knitting together the emergence of post-Thatcher liberal politics, personified by the young Tony Blair; music from Oasis, Pulp and Blur providing the soundtrack; Jarvis Cocker proffering the decade's street philosophy; London emerging as a fashion powerhouse again; and artists like Damien Hirst shoving dead sharks in tanks of formaldehyde to shock the art establishment globally.

The humour and drama that emerges from this video's astonishing interviews with the Gallagher brothers makes the whole thing worthwhile on its own. But you also get the reflective Damon Albarn of Blur, the insightful Jarvis Cocker (Pulp), and brilliant Ozvald Boateng - whose fashion sense fueled the whole 'Cool Britannia' sensibility, clothing and beyond.

My prized souvenirs of the era are memories of trips to London as a wide-eyed kiwi boy accompanying my fashion and street-savvy wife Lesley, plus a beautiful, tailored, purple shirt. Ozvald Boateng of course.

Book Review: When Giants Walked the Earth

2009-08-21T04:24:00.001-07:00

Astonishing lens on the world of rock music 1960 - 2000

Perhaps by my recent adoption of the electric guitar and a bunch of new friends who make up the Lonely Planet Band has made me biased towards learning about rock music?

I say that because I don't think I have ever read a book that grabbed my attention and entertained me for as long as this one.

Written in eye-watering detail, but not in an off-putting anorak fashion (as can happen with this sort of thing), the author brilliantly weaves the story of Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones from their beginnings in the industrial estates of the UK midlands, through to the full-on Led Zeppelin era, borne out of the rapid demise of the 'New Yardbirds'.

Mick Wall has the most amazing ability to drop in a few pages of handily italicised 'fly on the wall, truth-telling mate' prose just when you can't absorb any more facts or stories about each of the band members or the music they were developing.

There is some genuinely creepy stuff relating Jimmy Page's obsession with the occult, and you soon start to understand how the great rock bands all descended into drugs, booze, 'magick' and unreality in a desperate attempt to keep their edge in musical performance. Having dabbled in the smallest possible way in the experience of being on stage in a rock band, I can only imagine what it must be like to play to 100,000 fans in a stadium.

As the book proceeds, the tragic ending is telegraphed early by things starting to go wrong on tour in the USA in the late 1970s, a growing intolerance from fans of 25 minute guitar or drum solos (judged 'self indulgent crap' by the emerging punk rock movement), and an inability to reach the creative highs of the early years of the band.

It took a while to finish this enormous book - and I wished longingly for an accompanying soundtrack and concert footage. Mothership is the obvious choice as a tour through the years, and an amazing reminder of the soundtrack of my youth containing a great deal of Led Zeppelin indeed.

My favourite moment? In the early days, as it becomes obvious the combination of their musical talents is special, they formulate a name for the band. "It'll go down like a lead balloon" one of them speculates. "More like a bloody Lead Zeppelin" comes the retort. To avoid confusion of the pronunciation they change it to 'Led' and the rest is history.

The only thing possibly better than this book could be this movie.

Product Review: Oxford OL630 Motorcycle 'Sports' Tankbag

2009-08-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

Hero to Zero in 3.2 seconds. Definitely not for sports-bikes.

The only thing I've experienced in recent times to come close to matching the speed with this product whisked me from infatuation to disappointment was a spin round the Bays (back in Wellington) on Robbo's new GXR1000 K9 with 4 into 1 Yoshi pipe. 140kW on a bike no heavier, longer or larger than my GSXR-600 was sense-blistering, faster than a blink of an eye. Stupid fast, and utter disappointment I don't own one.

First sight of this Oxford sports tank bag had me salivating too. I go way back with tank bags (nearly 30 ears) - unable to afford one like my big brother on his RD400, I was reduced to occy-strapping a bin bag on the tank for a year or so - check it out!

There is a gadget under every zipper on this handsome bag - faux carbon fibre and titanium bits, magnets that stick to the tank with a very satisfying 'ker-dmp' sound, flaps that are scalloped to fit a typical modern sports bike's petrol tank, wet weather cover (would have been useful last weekend!), GPS and iPod suitable spots and map pockets. A fang in the Victorian countryside doesn't justify putting the Ventura rack pack on, and the Oxford looked just the ticket for camera, iPhone and wallet.

Just look what it does too!

Jamie's wry smile when he handed it over should have been a clue. He'd bought it to fit his VFR400 - the classic low seat, big tank sportster. "I'd need arms like a gorilla and a torso like an alien to fit round it" he'd lamented, looking hopefully at my 6'3 frame with XXL arms to match.

One advantage of the VFR is that being slightly old school, it has a squarish metal petrol tank all the way to the handlebars. These days that space up front houses everything but a gas tank - on the gixxer it's a plastic cover sloping dramatically down to the triple clamp. Plastic... magnets... right.

Never mind though, because the side flaps were not compatible with any area of the tank apart from the knee scallops.

Now, you'd be forgiven for wondering why I rate this product so poorly.

Let's cut straight to the chase.

In low-rider mode, with the bag on the tank, I can barely reach the bars. Even without a bulky riding jacket, or the snazzy rear pocket in place on the bag (it unzips as fortune would have it). Let's try another shaped rider (remember, we've already eliminated 5'9 Jamie).

Fail.

Happily enough, we found the Oxford's true place in the garage and retreated for Friday drinks.

If you've got a sportsbike, and you fancy a tank-bag, I'm afraid you should avoid the Oxford 'Sports' tank bag like a white line in a spring downpour. Try one of these instead. Oh, and watch out for a 1 owner, brand new Oxford OL630 on eBay sometime soon.

Review Score:

Function: 1/10 when attached to a Sports Bike. Maybe with a time machine I could go back to the RD400 for a proper fit?
Form: 10 (gadget heaven) - awesome design, shame no-one tried it on an actual sports bike. Mounts on a large mini-skip superbly.
Price: tbd - I didn't buy it, much to Jamie's disappointment.

Road Safety Statistics - Lies, Damned Lies and Advertising

2009-08-20T04:14:00.000-07:00

Look out NZ, St Kilda Road's Advertising Agencies are about to screw you too.

The Melbourne Age, part of the great Fairfax network of media has started to lend column inches of credibility to the claim by Melbourne's Yarra Council and Vichealth that a blanket reduction in urban road speeds to 30 km/h is the next great step-change in reducing the Victorian road toll.

Now, I recently tried out what 30 km/h feels like on Port Melbourne's streets. For a start, I don't get out of 1st gear on the Suzuki. The last time vehicles did this speed there was a horse in charge of the horsepower. I average 30 km/h on my bicycle on the way to work!

Why does this matter for kiwis as well? Because NZ's last 15 years of high cost, high rotation, gore-infested TV commercials and billboards for road safety can be directly linked back to the Victorian road toll campaigns and a handful of NZ's advertising agencies that coincidentally have Head Offices in St Kilda Road, Melbourne.

Speed kills, apparently. TV adverts with splattered bodies, operating theatre gore, and terse messages of social irresponsibility have preached this for years. Gee - better spend a heap of money slowing everyone down!

But speed also generates monstrous quantities of tax revenue for the State of Victoria, notably since the threshold for exceeding the posted limit dropped to 3km/h in 2002. And speeding also generates bucket loads of money for the advertising industry of course.

Hard-hitting TV adverts with ample quantities of realistically dismembered hoons have been oft-credited with reducing the road toll attributable to speeding. And in an article titled 'How Low can we Go?' in July 10th's Age, the story continues. Just look at the graph! Bloody speeding has been killing Aussie battlers, but the great government anti-speedsters are winning the war...

Kiwi advertising agencies were quick to cut and paste the Australian commercials and the emotional justification that came with them, while the NZ authorities and politicians were equally quick to vilify speeders, rather than examine driver skill, vehicle conditions, road design and quality, alcohol abuse or other conditions somewhat more difficult to tax.

So I'd just like to point out the 3 circled statistics in the graph above.

1976: random breath testing introduced. Road toll falls precipitously.
1989: random breath testing intensified. Road toll falls precipitously, again.
2002: interlock devices for serial drink drivers introduced. Road toll falls again.

Take out those drops, and you have precisely no reduction in road toll whatsoever. Drink, drive, bloody idiot obviously did the right thing in NZ, and with those results go head, spend all the taxpayers money you like to stop idiots who think they can control a motor-vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

But speeding? Get serious. What a waste of advertising dollars over the last 15 years. As an economist and student of the use of apparently 'scientific' facts and figures to back political ends, I also refer you to the positioning of this particular callout box right next to the largest drop in road toll. At a glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking they were connected - but on close examination the text refers to a point on the line centimetres away. Dodgy graphic.

In my time back in NZ from 2004 - 2007 I had the privilege of working on an award winning TV campaign to slow down cars on roadworks, a well-researched, non-gore and glamour for R+R Communications. There was doubt then that glamorising gore with reality TV show horror was effective at changing driver behaviour. But it took bravery to pitch a 30 second TVC concept that wasn't an escapee from a Mad Max movie.

Even if the 30km/h luddites are unsuccessful in Melbourne, rest assured they'll have enough impact to ensure both countries end up driving at 40 km/h around town at some stage in the future. And won't the government love the taxation of those who go 44?

"I'm inclined to ride"... famous last words.

2009-08-17T02:30:00.000-07:00

What's 80 cents between iPhone apps anyway?

Nigel: "Hey Matt, I'm interrogating BOM* as we speak - I'm inclined to ride unless utterly shite. Are we not men?"
Matt: "Yeah, I'm inclined to ride come what may. I'm Welsh ..."
Nigel: "...and I grew up in NZ mate. Rain and wind - meh."
*BOM = Bureau of Meterology website

Cut to following scene:

Pensive, bovine expression from Nigel - pics by Matt Cashmore

View Larger Map

The weather forecast had been optimistically interpreted as windy but not that wet for the day's planned motorcycle outing to Yea and back through Kinglake. Slight hiccup at the start of the day when I mistook the Hume Freeway for the Hume Highway, so our meeting with Jamie was fortuitously delayed while we leap-frogged to a Shell station in Craigieburn, about 35km North of Melbourne.

On the horizon was a purple-black cloud bank, traveling at 60km/h and preceded by some vigorous gusts of wind, so we gassed up and retreated to the servo to wait for it to blow over as the trusty iPhone BOMradar application said it would. We knew the front was due, but winds behind it were showing as mild, and the rain front was in theory, a one-off. Clear skies behind! Not ...

Back inside and another half hour later one of the 3 IT amigos decides to check another source of data for some insight on the seemingly non-stop rain and wind... whaddya reckon, can you spot the difference - my $1.19 BOMradar iPhone app on left; Matt's $1.99 Oz Weather on the right.

Home James, and don't spare the Suzuki. I'm pretty sure there's 80c rattling around the pockets of my wet weather gear somewhere.

The Best Things in Life - Riding with your mates

2009-06-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

In a week of firsts, the GSXR-600 got the shock of its life suffering continuous operation for more than the 11 minutes it takes me to get to work each day.

View Larger Map

Matt Cashmore, motorcyclist par excellence and social organiser set the route for he, Jamie and I to spend Saturday morning in the Victorian high country foothills, chasing the perfect toasted sandwich and loads of continuous well-cambered corners.

Here's Matt's Flickr slideshow, ending with us back in the city after nearly 300km and the discovery of what might be the perfect cheese, ham and tomato toastie at the Red Parrot cafe in Noojee - sitting by a roaring log fire after 90 minutes of chill winter air. It doesn't get much better than that.

For those about to rock ... Slabotomy at the Espy Hotel

2009-06-21T01:01:00.001-07:00

Comedy gold as Vivek inducts me into the International Rock Guitar brotherhood (with Pete Townsend Windmill instruction) before we start the gig at the Espy hotel on Thursday 18 June, 2009.

More pics to come via Flickrfeeds. First up a set of pictures shot by Jamie Supple:

Then a bunch shot by Mark Broadhead at http://www.flickr.com/photos/markbroadhead/

Lonely Planet Band Images

2009-05-18T03:36:00.000-07:00

Flickrfeed from Matt Cashmore

Stills by Venessa Paech

Stupid goofy smile from man having too much fun with a Fender!

Nicked these off VP's Facebook, but I'd rather send you to her erudite blog instead for some good reading on the subject of online communities.

Lesley Melody - resident artist

2009-05-15T18:43:00.000-07:00

When we finally get back to our new home in Melbourne (a renovation project of Grand Designs scale), I am looking forward to being immersed in the creativity that comes with living with an artist.

A sampler of Lesley's work is above - she trained in the USA using the time when she had no visa for working, and we had Noah arrive. Since then she has gone on to study further in New Zealand and Australia. Her blog can be found here: http://lesleymelody.blogspot.com

Reflections on Working in a Multimedia World

2009-05-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

I love crappy graphs. Here's one of mine reflecting on working at Lonely Planet, who are building a multi-media business out of the long-time successful travel guidebook publishing business.

It's a bit like having more than one heart and thus multiple pulse rates. There is such a temptation to just surgically bludgeon the rhythms together, to slow down the internet (like you could!) to match the cycles that it takes to make physical, high quality book product - at best you risk becoming irrelevant.

Perhaps worse, to try to speed up book production into some frantic rhythm that reflects the web today ("this is so last Thursday" is one of my favourite quotes from dot com times).

LP's success has been in bridging across these rhythms - pipes that funnel content between the media, or enable new ways of working in long-standing processes like book production. And then embrace the new media with products like iPhone City Guides and Phrase Books. It's a fun place to work as a result.

The King Boys, a short film by the Clark Brothers, 2006

2009-05-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

I have a favourite song by a collective of Wellington musicians who call themselves 'Fly My Pretties' that goes:

"Wellington's just a small town but it packs a lot of punch,

There's talent oozing from the walls and they eat ideas for lunch."

Some of that talent makes films. And I'm actually in one of them. A whole 11 seconds of fame.

I guess that last factoid makes me biased, but Fraser and Chris Clark are people I greatly admire for their film-making and story-telling talents.

Waiting interminably for a green light and a critical co-finance deal from the NZ Film Commission, they were challenged to make a short film that would show off the essence of their feature film idea, and test their resolve as film-makers by giving them 1/5 of the money actually needed to make a 15 minute short film.

They gathered favours, friends and emerging kiwi talent, tapped the Wellington film community for studios, costumes, make-up, cameras, set constructors and actors; as well as the artistic and design community for poster designs, music, printers, photography, web designers, and the result is something else.

Geoff Clark (the boys' Dad) took the role as referee, Fraser's father-in-law was a ringside judge. Costumes came from the recently completed King Kong courtesy of Peter Jackson. A couple of dozen enthusiastic extras combined with Adam Clark's camera wizardy made up a whole stadium full of wrestling fans.

It featured on the opening night of the Wellington Film Festival in 2006, as a prequel to Tommy Lee Jones' tour de force The 3 Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Sadly, I missed my own debut on one of the biggest screens in the Southern Hemisphere owing to a work commitment in Auckland that evening that could not be escaped.

It went on to do a round of pretty good film festivals, was bought by Rialto channel and won an Air NZ screen award. Only recently Fraser made a high resolution edition of the film available on YouTube in 2 parts:

My role was to play the gelatinous man-mountain of a wrestler who the hero, returning from war and recovering from shell-shock finds himself facing for the 1947 NZ Wrestling crown. An actual bona fide actor had stepped up for the role, but was called away to paying work just a filming was scheduled.

Needless to say it was great fun, despite hanging around a cold warehouse shooting the finale for a weekend in nothing more than black-painted basketball boots and shorts that were pulled up so high I looked like an alien with no belly button. Mike Clare's great still photography from the shoot captured me with a clarity that made me question the sensibility of that extra slice of R+R pizza at lunch on Fridays.

Wrestling was a huge deal in NZ in the pre and post-war periods. Wellington had weekly bouts in the town hall, several gyms where people trained, and the great Lofty Blomfield reached a World Championship final bout where his famous Octopus Clamp earned him a draw.

Drawing on this as background, The King Boys paints a rich psychological, sporting and family landscape in the post-war period, with the acting talents of Rangi Ngamoki, Karlos Drinkwater and Grant Tilly at the fore.

The boys have now put the feature on the back-burner and have another project cooking with strong interest in all the right places. Watch out for it. Hope they're writing a part for a 6'3 slightly graying wrestler in there somewhere - I'm owed another 4 seconds of fame.

Fraser, Chris and Adam (no relation) Clark on set during filming.

Chris and Rangi on set

A - G - D - E : learning to play in a band

2009-05-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

Well, joining a band didn't prove to be quite as impossible as I'd imagined. Helps that it's the Lonely Planet Band, and that they must be the most welcoming bunch of talented musicians on the planet.

The set-list, with the objective of a charity gig at the Espy on June 18th is a yet-to-be finalised range of rock to blues-rock to some more poppy-jazzy numbers to ensure the Ministry of Fenders gets a break at some stage in the evening.

What have I learned in 3 weeks of Band Pressure Cooker?

Led Zeppelin were geniuses of the simple arrangement that makes 1+1=4, and that it is fun to play loud.
You can easily turn down your guitar when you just can't quickly locate C#m (and your fingers just won't stretch to it yet). God help learner drummers.
That learning = failing, then repeating. Which is why the natural thing to do is to give up learning in life as soon as you can, because failure sucks. I'd forgotten that.
That the 'failing' part of learning is more than balanced out by the joy of mastering something - even as simple as strumming the A G D E combination.
That you don't have to play all the notes in a complex chord to get a result (bit of Eoin philosophy there) - wonder how that can be applied in life?
That listening makes contributing a helluva lot more logical (where is that beat again - listen for Tad!).
That a lesson or 2 from someone who has the mojo and the patience goes a long way to accelerating learning (thanks Rich). There was no 'how' or 'why' when I learned classical guitar as a boy - yet I've relied on those curiosities to get me through life (especially work).
That I wish I could sing.
And finally that maybe you can have too many guitars playing at once.

Then again, that last point isn't proven beyond all doubt just yet.

The Best Things in Life - Shopping for an Electric Guitar

2009-04-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

25 Good Summers to Master the Campagnolo Super Record of Guitars

Every so often people will ask if I will go shopping for a bike with them. Crazy thing to do, because I am a race-bike anorak of Olympic standard, so when it comes to that moment where you ask "what would you do?" I have to lie.

I will tell you "sure take the $899 Giant with 9 speed, it will do fine" or "105's really just a couple of seasons ago's Dura Ace" hoping like hell you never get to be really passionate about cycling as you will realise that what I meant to say was "sell everything you have to buy the Colnago with the Record groupset".

It's not that I'm a bad person, I just can't bear to explain to you the insanity of how only 0.0005% of the population are going to get what it means to have Record over Chorus - and how it gets to the very essence of road cycling. Just a fleeting glimpse of Bianchi's celeste paintwork gives me the torrent of emotions that is Fausto Coppi's life story, the 20th century history of Europe, life, death, honour and betrayal. Not logic, emotion.

This week, after a moment of 'why die wondering?' madness, I turned out for the Lonely Planet Band's first Winter rehearsal of 2009 and amazingly was not sent home or made to put my guitar down and stand in the corner. A bunch of real musicians let me strum along on my Seagull acoustic as loud as I possibly could, showing me chords and filling a hole in my heart that has been empty forever.

To be fair, un-miked, they could not even tell how craptapulous I was. An acoustic guitar falling in behind 3 Fenders, a Gibson and a whopping bass, maketh no sound in the forest. I did learn to strum my guitar louder and harder than I ever thought possible!

So when I quizzed the LP Guitar Jedi Council on what to do (having brought a knife to a gunfight in guitar terms), I was super-sensitive to any diplomatic "get a cheap guitar and amp and see how you go" responses. There were none. These are my kind of passionate people, and Ian even offered to give up his Saturday morning (and risk being late for his beloved Bombers playing the Anzac Day game with Collingwood) to check out the wares of Anthony at The Guitar Colonel in South Melbourne.

We met at 10:30, and the next 3 hours were spent in some weird space-time warp trying 10 or so vintage guitars from Fender Tele's and a Strat to Gibson Firebirds and and S5. Ian's eye had already fallen on a 1996 Fender Blues Junior 15 watt valve amp, which was not negotiable if a guitar was to be had.

By noon it was obvious, even to a 5 chord duffer like me that the Strat was it. Way beyond initial budget, this was just the right thing to do. And nor did Ian bullshit me like I'm going to bullshit you if you take me along on a bike-buying mission. He just turned the amp to 11, let a few licks of Stairway loose and we were not for one moment 'denied' the thrill of gold-class living. That's the moment in the photo above.

Sadly, the white one was sold, but the black 1994 Strat 57 Reissue will be mine.

That legendary Wayne's World Moment

And just to remind you what it is all about...

Why 25 Good Summers?

At 45, I figure that by 70 I had better have this thing sorted. That's 25 summer's worth of practice on the rooftop to go.

Hercules vintage cycling billboard

2009-04-25T00:46:00.000-07:00

Around 1992 I was visiting friends in Christchurch when Vivienne the keen-eyed treasure spotter mentioned a poster she'd seen in an auction house in the city - on my favourite subject of course. As it turned out, hardly a poster - this thing was 3 metres tall!

It had been folded for decades, but the colours were true as the day they were printed (using stone lithograph process). It was an eye-watering amount of money for a piece of art that would be un-hangable in most homes. As luck would have it, we had a major wall in our house that we could have squeezed it onto.

The years that followed were spent asking ourselves the constant question - what the hell would be do with that billboard? Through a friend of a friend we had the major folds reduced professionally, and put it in a protective roll. How to actually transform it into art was not so easy. As we talked ourselves up on its rarity and value (who keeps billboards?) we talked ourselves out of exposing it to light at all. Back in the roll it went.

In Manhattan later in the 1990s we visited an amazing poster gallery (squeezed up some stairs, around a corner - classic 19th century workshop industrial space converted to gallery) who had some good ideas about backing it on canvas but the scale of the job left furrowed brows. How would we get it back from the USA?

I have managed to find a lot out about Hercules - founded in 1911 they were the major force in British bike manufacture in the early 20th century. A website called Made in Birmingham celebrates their achievements, and maps their sad demise over time. In 1928 Hercules made over 250,000 bikes, exported 26% of all British cycles and by 1935 this figure had increased to nearly 40%!

There is a great photo-stream on Flickr on Hercules bikes. This image is from that stream, and you can see the similarities of the artwork and styling.

After WW2 the steel supplier to Hercules (Tube Investments - later known as TI) took them over, and by the 1960s the Hercules brand was in decline, eventually subsumed under the more popular Raleigh name along with most of Britain's bike brands, other than modern legends like Mercien, Dawes and Condor.

The name lives on in India, where they make 'old school' Hercules bikes pretty similar to the bikes in the poster.

The 1930s is around the period of the billboard from what I can deduce. Christchurch in NZ was a cycling hotbed in this period. My BSA racing bike came from Christchurch (spotted coincidentally by Vivienne's husband Ian! NZ is a small place and these 2 knew their trash from their treasure), and there is quite a lot of historical information around about the racing scene in this part of the South Island.

I imagine a poor billboard hanger getting to the end of his week, having laboured hard to put up this fortnight's advertising artwork, finding it in the back of his old van and figuring they'd done enough for the week and it could wait. Somehow it never got posted, and never got lost. A note on the back says it is 1 of 16 printed.

In a recent, slightly bizarre coincidence I discovered Studio M in Sydney, and a fellow called Michael Brewster who is Australia's expert on dealing with vintage posters. I'm planning on giving Michael the poster to see what miracles he can perform with it. The coincidence? Michael worked at the poster gallery in Manhattan that we visited in our earlier search for a solution in the 1990s.

Holden v Ford - Holden wins yet another major event.

2009-04-13T04:24:00.000-07:00

Not only did we win, but we pissed all over Ford on this one.

I should declare up front (like you hadn't already guessed), probably owing to the second car I can recall my family owning being a Holden stationwagon around 1970, I am clearly of the General Motors tribe. I am hardwired to Holden.

The next family car was (not surprisingly) another Holden wagon reg GL6205 - burned into my male homo trivia subconcious for god knows what reason, and apart from a brief sojourn with the dark side when my brother-in-law Alan sold me his Fairmont wagon in the early 1990s, I've been right behind the lion with his paw on the wheel.

That Fairmont did sterling duty as the team car for the Colonial Classic in 1995 - dressed up in Peanut Slab colours, it packed numerous bikes on roof and rack, and half the team in comfort. It was a great colour, had electric everything but sadly, was a Ford. Undoubtedly the choice of car was far more advisable than the choice of workboots with white socks and pants pulled a long way up.

Thirty years on from the Kingswood and Belmont, the current family car is a 2001 Commodore wagon, dusty gold coloured 'Shitbox' model with alloy wheels and only 161,563km on the clock. Living in Melbourne, it's the logical choice for a low-cost vehicle. They make them here. They make the spare parts here. There are a zillion of them on the roads - they are the trabbie of Victoria. Plus the windows wind by hand, a serious novelty for today's generation of children. I can put my bike in the back and double the Commmdore's value!

Truth is, I'm not well acquainted with any of the recent offerings of GM or Ford, nor am I likely to become in the near future - I love the 'BMW 3 series that's been amateurishly stretched in Powerpoint' looks of the VE, but I've never driven one. As I've aged, I find a frightening attraction to the old-man Holdens (Calais - who would name a car after that shit-hole? Hang on, the same guys named one after a hillside suburb in the Hutt Valley...) rather than a horny SS-V8, Maloo or the Monaros, but I'm accepting of aging as natural part of life.

There's probably no question the Ford is better engineered either. They got a handsome tax break from the Victorian government to keep 5 people employed in Geelong designing it, but the nicest thing I can say is that I've mistaken a couple of new Falcons for old Commodores when viewed from a certain 3/4 angle. Can't see the difference when they dress them up for V8 racing, that's for sure.

Anyway, courtesy of the RACV magazine this month, I am thrilled to see Holden once again trounce Ford. With GM billions in debt, only 45 days from Chapter 11, cutting Saab loose last month, and no doubt a few Melbourne accountants staying up at night worrying about whether Holden can survive on its own 4 feet, this is comforting news indeed.

What's more, the discerning car thief also prefers Holden Commodore.

Hold on a minute - that recovery rate seems enormous. It makes me wonder if these so-called car thieves were never actually intending to nick a vehicle - maybe when they went down to Melbourne's new Flexicar pickup spot and discovered a Honda bloody Jazz, they did the natural thing and just took the car next door? Which statistically speaking in this town, was quite likely to be a 1999 - 2004 Commodore.

Doesn't this guy look like he'd prefer a Commodore wagon to you?

Resources for Racing Bike Restorers

2009-04-05T04:56:00.000-07:00

Key Resources for Racing Bike Restorers

Most importantly - know someone who was there, in the racing scene at the time of your bike - even if you weren't (thanks Dave!).

Here's a few websites that saved me over the various projects I have done (and made me the happy child that Bianchi promised in their 1950 catalog):

1.Campy only: the website to end all websites for Campy snobs like me. Full timelines of components (critical to getting a build right), opinionated writing about the joys of pasta over rice.

2. eBay USA - a thriving vintage bike trading community exists on eBay, although the bidding is global and rare items can go stratospheric. Don't be afraid of freight, just think it through and talk to the seller before you win - that said, getting a whole bike out of the USA is a feckin' nightmare unless you know someone like Trevor Rice, wh might find you a nice consolidation deal. I had an amazing experience with the vendor of the gold rims on my Bianchi - they eventually came from Paris to NZ twice after a Post Office screwup that occurred not 40 metres from my desk.

Be warned - you can spend hundreds of hours trawling, watching and bidding on parts. Best to have a group of you interested or undertaking restoration projects at the same time, so when the inevitable pressure comes on the load is shared.

3. TradeMe NZ - populated by some savvy people who know the value of second hand treasure, but an occasional source of gold. I had to rat a whole Ciocc to get the levers (factory drilled Super Record) for the Bianchi.

4. Bulgier.net - one of those rare little goldmines of content about bikes, components and racing. Here I found the exact catalog from 1979-80 of the bike I was working on. I nearly wept with joy.

5. Various Vintage Mad-assed Collectors - they are out there, and often have amazing websites like this one in Japan. That's who you are competing with on eBay. Here's an amazing archive of bikes at The Racing Bicycle, and another amazing collection by Ray Dobbins.

6. Classic Rendevous - a well known site for collectors, and a good place to see what is proper and appropriate restoration. You can go too far. Or can you?

7. Shimano Group Overview: I realise it's the devil's own spawn but should you need to check the correctness of some parts from the dark side, you can't beat this site. I have vintage 8 speed Shimano on my Eddie Merckx, which was tougher to get right than Super Record or 50th Anniversary.

8. Continental Components: obscure parts for vintage builds.

9. Yellowjersey.org: stockists of the restorer's gold - NOS or new old stock. I got various bolts and adjusters here that were proving impossible elsewhere.

10. Other blogs: more and more people are starting to write about their passions on the web. Here's a good one called Bottom Bracket - a million subjects but a lot of vintage bike stuff recorded for us to enjoy.

And above all else:

An enthusiastic LBS (local bike shop): young Daniel at Burkes in Wellington (let alone proprietor Peter Burke!) tolerated my dragging into the workshop and boring him senseless over some tiny jewel of a part which moved the project along all of 1%, but had taken months to find in new old stock. Also having the magic of people like Ross Bee (sadly no longer with us - lost his life in a bike race in 2008) who lavished more hand-crafted care on the paint jobs of my bikes than you would believe possible. Doug, Oli (at Roadworks), Antosh, you crazy bastards you're all out there and we thank you.

1,001 Blog Visits in a Month - Success for Woolshed 1

2009-03-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

Like the plumber's hot water, the electrician's house-wiring and the dressmaker's children's clothes - my love of blogs has only led to rack and ruin on my own site. But I don't really care - with 7 blogs under my watchful eye (what do you call a collection of blogs?), I get great pleasure from seeing them emerge and sprout.

Here's the top-scorer in the blog family - my Dad's Woolshed 1 blog. Check out the Google Analytics' stats from today (above) - he finally cracked the 1,000 visitor mark for a month. Nearly 400 posts, traffic from 70 countries, Google driving 70% of the users from search using 640 different keywords, an average time on site of 2 minutes, plus nearly 80% of the traffic new each month.

Coupled with his multiple knols, he will probably see 15-20,000 web visitors to his work this year - with a range of interests from the often hilarious history of Northumbrian agriculture in the 1950s, to unique texts on sheep, goat, pig, cat, dog and cattle behaviour, animal welfare, NZ agricultural history and farm economics.

He has been awarded a 'Top Viewed Knol' award by Google, and one of his popular animal behaviour knols has become part of Gogle's beta program for text to voice translation - which is scarily amazing technology by the way.

As a scientific and technical writer for 50 years, Clive has had a lifetime devotion to the little © for copyright symbol in his work. Now, he publishes under a creative commons license (non-commercial, attribution requested) and marvels at people still attempting to write technical non-fiction for a readership adept at web searching and RSS feeds rather than the Dewey Decimal system of their university library.

He's also dragged in a range of co-contributors to his blog, mostly in the field of the priceless memories of Northumberland's farming history.

In his spare time he maintains a blog for the Waikato Guild of Woodworkers. To my utter chagrin, they're an easy second on the league table in the blog family! From a tiny base of Hamilton, New Zealand this blog goes out to over 30 countries.

And that's why I love the internet.

Bikes I love: Fausto Coppi Lugano 53 c1995

2009-02-07T22:04:00.000-08:00

The Fausto Coppi, awaiting a better future than commuting and life as a loaner

This beautiful Columbus Genius steel frame came to me while working at R+R in Wellington in 2006 - at 58cm just slightly too small for me, and somewhat oversize for Dave in this new world of compact frames, where like most people he had downsized from 58-59 in his youth to riding 55-56's. With a 140mm stem it would work fine for me. Sort of a compact for a clydesdale.

The Fausto Coppi name was never directly associated with a genuine Fausto-led bike-making endeavour, in the same vein as Eddy Merckx, Ernesto Colnago, Eduardo Bianchi et al. After his death, his family eventually sold the rights to the name to Maschiaghi, an Italian industrial conglomerate who made bikes among other things.

So the story goes, Maschiagi sought out a great Italian frame-maker to help build the first range of bikes. An elderly engineer who had been crafting Ciocc's frames from the 1970s was contacted, and he agreed to come over to Maschiaghi to build something worthy of the name Coppi.

Being a steel-craftsman, the first frames were inevitably lugged steel. However, on this frame only the bottom bracket has a lug (and it's a beauty) - the rest of the bike is welded and hand-filed back to seamless joins.

The Lugano 53 model name refers to his win in the world champs in 1953, held that year in Lugano, Switzerland (see my signed postcard here).

The bikes, or a model remarkably similar to this one were used by the Italian race team Polti in the first half of the 1990s - seen in this photo.

It wasn't long before the bikes that the Coppi bikes took a huge leap forward - creating what is probably the most famous range in the history of the brand. The bright yellow, fat-tubed aluminium racers piloted by Polti from about 1997 were a brute of a bike in terms of power and stiffness, and became tremendous objects of rider desire - steel was largely forgotten.

For everything Polti, check out this amazing website.

The frame sat in the office for some months as the debate raged as to how to fit it out. There were higher priority restorations under way, so a quick-fix with parts from the cupboard and a modern Campagnolo 9-speed Mirage group set for all of $160 from Ribble got things under way.

The first few tests of the new bike left me white-faced and white-knuckled - descending Mount Victoria with a flexy ITM 140mm chrome quill (state of the art for 1994!) and the tyre rubbing on the downtube under brakes. Bring me my brown bib-shorts!

Solving these problems unleashed aesthetic hell upon the Coppi as can be seen in its current photo. Donated, but at least 1990s vintage carbon forks solved the flex (gorgeous but useless triangular profile steel forks filed for future reference), however a short-cut steerer meant a flipped over Ritchey aheadset stem. Ugh!

It remains in the collection for wet commutes, the visiting cyclist, and as a small tribute to the second greatest cyclist who ever lived. In its finest outing to date around the mountains of Dandenong, I secretly suspect Dave started to wonder if a move back to a 58cm frame might possibly be in order again one day.

Toast to Ando and Beck

2008-12-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

2008 was the year Lonely Planet got back into the online game with the launch of a new website after struggling to do that for too long. With new shareholders BBCW on board, we met some wonderful people who gave up life in London to put their weight behind the project - which in the end won both the Australian iAward for the simultaneous transformation of organisational capability with delivery of the world's largest travel site; and the People's Choice Webby for Best Travel Site.

Here's our toast (from my colleague Chris Boden and I) to two of them, Andy and Rebecca Conroy. Apologies to Afferbeck Lauder and his brilliant book Let's Talk Strine - you cannot imagine how funny a South African and a Kiwi delivering this could be.

We're hair terday in this Gloria Soame
Ter sendoff Ando and Beck
We'll do it in proper strine style
Gettin' blotto on the deck.

In pommie-land 18 months ago
Old Smithy had a spout
Wheelaffta send a cuppla guns
To sort the mippies out.

Sex of content!
That's what she needs
Ta make a website bitter
Aorta jam the books online
And get it out the shitter.

The problem is I gunga din
To all the different bits
I need a single sign-on
It's just getting' on me tits.

Hare we gunna build all this?
Some bits moron once!
We'll get stark ender everything
In just a garbler munce.

"She'll be done by Cupdee" Ando says
But come spring in Melbin tairn,
There's no race-day for half the team
Beck just chucks her hembairg dairn.

The points are crook, she's up the spout
Said Beck "it's like a bloody maze"
But nothing we can't bodgy up
Inner narkup laddaze.

And launch we did, Navimber last
With not much egg jelly rooted
Scona beer bonza site
Zactly like we mooted.

We're gunna miss them bee in rand
As LP as Jimmy's 'roo
It's like a furry tile ya know
Zarf trawl that we've been through.

So laze and gem I ask you now
To rayzup all yer glasses
To Ando and Beck, who we've come to think
Aren't bad for pommie bastards.

Working in America - reflection on safety

2008-11-17T19:35:00.000-08:00

Working in the USA was a crazy thing. There was a nasty overlap between an employee's freedom to carry a gun, and the jitters that gave me when I monitored the speed with which pain-killers were consumed from the lunch-room in the Costco industrial packs of Panadol - let alone the valium, Ritalin and a million other pharmaceuticals that got the team through the day.

While in Minneapolis, the gun law was changed in some electoral skullduggery to allow concealed handguns to be carried. We foreigners never felt safe again.

As always - crappygraph.com comes to the rescue with a simple illustration of the problem!

Genetics for Dummies

2008-09-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

More old Palm pilot gems. I copied this from somewhere erudite - wish I'd been more diligent in keeping the source reference.

A Cell has a helix shaped string of DNA - think of a set of encylopedias containing complete blueprint for life.

DNA is a set of 23 pairs of 'books' (chromosomes) in the set.

Each word in the books is a Gene (100, 000 of them).

The words are made up of 4 main letters - G (guanine), A (adenine). T (thymine), C (cytosine).

These letters are nucleotides. There are 3b of them in total in a DNA string, 90% of which do nothing.

The genome project is mapping the 100,000 genes and their role.

Single Genes may cause disease such as cystic fibrosis. Combinations of genes may cause more complex conditions (obesity for example).

Once a growing cell splits from 8 to 16 the cell begins to specialise and only reads a part of the book.

Clones are easily created at the cellular level as in identical twins.

Dolly the sheep proved that an old DNA strand can be tricked from its specific role back in time to accessing the full encyclopedia.

Thus it is a new form of cloning, more akin to genetic-level engineering than twinning.

World's Greatest Inventions (ever)

2008-09-02T04:55:00.000-07:00

Another gem from my old Palm Pilots - a list that generated a lot of debate (and ridicule) at the time I recall! I'll try to put it in order sometime soon, and perhaps try to justify these wild claims.

Fire
Wheel
Weaving
Metalwork
Plough
Writing (Sumeria, 3000BC)
Printing press (Gutenburg 1458) - note: da Vinci refused to have his manuscripts typeset as he thought printing was a fad.
Water frame (Arkwright) 1770 vs Spinning Jenny (Hargreaves) 1767
Pulp paper (1798)
Gatling Gun (1860s)
Telecommunications (AG Bell, 1876)
Engine (Niklaus Otto, 1877)
Refrigeration (?)
Plane (Wrights, 1903)
Thermal Oil refining (W. Burton, 1913)
Liquid fuel rocket (Goddard, 1923)
Atomic bomb (1945)
Computer (1946)
Satellite (Clarke 1948, launched '58)
The Pill (1961)
The internet
Theory of 4 forces - weak nuclear, strong nuclear, gravity, electromagnetic.

Quotes from my Palm Pilot

2008-09-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

I worked out how to crack my ancient Palm Pilot (pre 3COM!) data files. Found some great old quotes, in no particular order:

Travelers, there is no path. Paths are made by walking. (Antonio Machado, 1875-1939)

Relying on quantitative analysis is akin to thinking the buying & mailing of Christmas cards causes Christmas.

Organisations should change their habits - not their culture (Drucker)

Don't write off Disney as a global financial services player in the 21st century. No one has a bad day at Disneyland. No one's called Mickey Mouse a bastard (Linda Nicholls. Wallis Enquiry)

Rivers knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem for the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay (Pat Barker, The Regeneration Trilogy, page 184).

The best way to predict the future is to invent it (The X-files)

Beneath all this horse-shit there just has to be a pony.

The fuckup fairy has visited again...

If you have the opportunity to seize power, sell your mother to do so - you can always buy her back afterwards. (Arab proverb)

False face must hide what the false heart doth know (Macbeth Act 1)

The better a hammer has served in the past, the more all new problems look like nails (Kotter)

There's a big difference between hope & expectation (Fox Mulder)

As cunning as a fox who has just been made Professor of cunning at Oxford University (Blackadder Goes Forth)

Whenever there's any doubt, there is no doubt (Ronin, 1999)

Mankind hopes vaguely, but dreads precisely.

You can tell a lot about a company by the person they keep. (Microsoft)

I do not know with what weapons WW3 will be fought with, but WW4 will be fought with sticks & stones (Einstein)

Insanity is doing the same thing again & again, but expecting a different result (Rita Mae Brown)

Change is inevitable, progress is not (John Callum).

You can't talk your way out of what you have behaved your way into (Covey)

More NZers believe Elvis is alive than support compulsory retirement savings (Michael Cullen)

Dealing with DSS is working for the dole (graffiti Melbourne)

The world breaks everyone, but afterwards some are strong at the broken places (Hemingway)

This project is so important, we can't let more important things interfere with it (UPS)

Work is a thing you do, not a place you go.

An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it (Orlando Battista)

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income (Errol Flynn)

Cafe society or Nescafe society?

It girl or twit girl?

We don't like their sound - groups of guitars are on their way out... (Decca Records rejecting the Beatles, 1962)

Radio has no future (Lord Kelvin, 1897)

TV won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first 6 months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night (Darryl Zanuck, 20th CF, 1946)

Airplanes are interesting toys, but of 0 military value (Marshall Ferdinand Foch, French military strategist 1911)

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home (Ken Olsen, founder DIGITAL, 1977)

Radio makes surprise impossible (Joseph Daniels, US Secretary of Navy, October 16 1942)

What use could this company make of an electrical toy? (Western Union turning down AG Bell's $100k offer to sell his struggling company)

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? (Harry Warner 1927)

Stocks have reached a permanently hiqh plateau (Irving Fisher, Yale Prof of economics, Oct 17, 1929)

The Bull With the Bowler Hat by Clive Dalton and Don Clegg

2008-07-01T01:57:00.000-07:00

An extract from the book Daft Laddies, Farming Tales of North Tyne and Rede 50 years on (2003) by Clive Dalton and Don Clegg, shared by permission. If you'd like a copy of the book, drop me a line or google the title.

In these days of genome mapping, DNA analysis, multiple ovulation and embryo transfer (MOET), cloning, and genetically modified (GM) organisms – you have to smile at the consternation caused by the simple process of Artificial Insemination (AI) on North Tyne and Rede farms in the 1950s.

As in all farming circles there are leaders who try new things, and countless sceptics who knaa nowt about it, but nivortheless have strang opinions forecasting doom and disaster for aall involved. There was a lot of it aboot in the 1950s when AI became available on local farms.

AI solved the need to keep a bull, freeing up feed for an extra cow and calf. It was also a lot safer as housed bulls regularly caused injuries to farm folk. But the big selling point was that through AI you could get the services of a much better bull and at reasonable cost. And you’ll remember the boss was nivor maede o’ muney!

Aall a lot of blow’d rrubeesh, said the sceptics! So what were their concerns - real and imagined? The first was how to taalk aboot it – even to say the name. The word “artificial” usually referred to manure from a bag. That was bad enough but the word “insemination” was just gannin’ ower far.

Trouble started with the inevitable questions of “huw de they git the juice oot o’ the bull”? Nobody had been to the AI centre at Shinfield in faraway Coonty Durham to see the process, so there was only conjecture of mind-boggling proportions.

So when we farmin’ college students with wor fancy beuk larnin’ explained how the bull served into a warmed rubber tube and the semen was collected in a small glass test tube – well that was ower daft for woords. “Nee bull worth his keep wad dee owt as daft as that, man!” was the comment.

Then there was the question aboot huw the cuw gat bulled if there wasn’t a bull? Well, we explained, it was done by the “AI man” – in the North Tyne that was a Mr Jamieson from Hexham. Now you were clearly away wi the fairies, bonny lad.

Suddenly, we students were a font of knowledge of such things – but you had to watch what company you were in afore borstin’ forth with yor newfangled knowledge. It was aall right at the Saturday night dances to explain such things to the village lassees, but not to chorch folk ov a Sunday.

The dangerous bit was when you explained where Mr Jamieson put his hand and aboot the glass tube containing the semen (no plastics then) which could very easily break inside the cuw. This was seen as undiluted filth comin’ from the gob of somebody like mesel (CD) who blew the organ, tolled the bell and took the collection at St Cuthbert’s chorch!

There were many folk in those days who genuinely believed that the whole process of not letting nature take its course, by letting bulls do bull’s work, would do some irreparable genetic and psychological harm to cattle as a species. And then to explain that semen could be frozen and be kept for EVER was totally ower the top and would be the end of farmin’.

But probably the biggest embarassment for the daft laddie was phoning from a very public phone box to order the bull. Few farms had phones in those days so you had to go to the nearest public phone box with all the trauma of having the right money, pressin’ button A and not B at the right time, and then deliverin’ your message.

Then the biggest shock came when you got through to the Milk Marketing Board in Hexham, and a WOMAN answered! That was bad enough but then she started askin’ you questions:

MMB: “Good morning Sir, Milk Marketing Board Insemination Service”
Laddie: “Helloa, Aye – am caalin’ aboot a cuw from Nettle Hill.”
MMB: “Yes, I have the farm details, sir”. Is the cow standing, sir?”
Laddie : “Wey no, she was lyin’ doon in the byor when Aa left.”
MMB: “No sir, is she in standing heat or is she just coming on?”
Laddie: “Oh Aa see. By heck no, she’s stannin’ allright. The boss was just sayin’ she’s stannin’ like a dyke. She’s fair mad a bullin’.”
MMB: “What breed of bull do you want, sir?”
Laddie: “Oh, the boss wants Shorthorn but the missus likes them new Friesians they hev doon at Acomb.”
MMB: “So what’s the decision, sir?”
Laddie: “Well, the row was still ganin’ on when Aa left on me bike to phone up. Mebbe wise to bring baeth bulls’ juice, eh?”
MMB: “Has the cow been inseminated before sir?”
Laddie: “Oh aye – this will be the fowerth time. The boss was just sayin’ that if she doesn’t haad this time, she’ll gan te Archie’s Galloway. He’ll stop owt, Aa tell ye.
MMB: “Thank you for calling sir, Mr Jamieson will be there this afternoon.

It was all ower much for some folk and after escaping from the phone box on a hot summer morning after a grilling like that, and gollarin’ doon the phone so the lass cud heor - as Hexham, remember, was 12 miles away or more, the sweat was just dripping off you. It was a relief to get back on the hard iron seat of the hay turner.

Then followed the air of expectancy, waiting for Jamieson’s arrival. The poor cuw tied up in the byre was equally excited and to show this she bellowed all day, decorating the newly whitewashed walls in half circles of liquid green.

Sure enough, late in the day a little white Ford van came chugging into the yard and out popped Mr Jamieson in spotless Wellingtons and riding britches carrying a white box and a waterproof coat. Here indeed was “the bull with the bowler hat” as many farmers dubbed him. It was unbelievable for some – whaat in the wide woorld was he ganin’ dee?

The mystery deepened and was made no less enlightening when he asked for a bucket of warm water, a towel and bit of soap, and somebody to hold the cow’s tail oot of the way. Then he put his coat on back to front! Ye beggor o’ Hexham – what next?

Can you imagine how these details were received by good folk with puritanical views and sceptical about so-called scientific progress? Explaining that the cow’s cervix was palpated through the rectum wall and the semen deposited just through the cervix by the glass pipette, were details they begged to be spared from. That was just ower much filth for decent lugs, and was typical of the “modreen rubbeesh young folk larned at them farmin’ colleeges”.

The ultimate argument against AI was that a cow mated by AI wad nivor haad again tiv a bull. And the sceptics always had examples of folk they kenned from Deadwater down to Acomb with this awful experience. “The cuws wor rruined man, an waadn’t even haad te the Galloway bull efterwards”, they declared. The Galloway bull was seen as the ultimate in bovine impregnation – “if he cudn’t stop a cuw, nowt wad”.

Other doubting Thomases had seen these AI-bred calves and they were “nivor ony geud, man, and just blow’d rrubeesh”. I remember once viewing one of the early AI-bred calves in the presence of some sceptics, and, in an atmosphere of near wonderment, the comment was made – “Eeeh man! leuk heor, leuk whaat the bull wi’ the bowler hat’s gitten. Aye man, an’ it kindo leuks like Jamieson an’ aall.”

Imagine if they’d known about the recently discovered evidence that we humans share about 90% of our DNA with cattle. Aa knaa whee’d git the blame for this shock horror – owld Jamieson from Hexham!

Potted History: the BC Years

2007-12-05T03:18:00.000-08:00

Dinosaurs bite dust 10m BC
Lucy 2m BC
Cave paintings 50,000 BC
Pyramids
Confucius
Mesopotemians
1500 BC Early Greek civilization
Babylonians & Egyptians
1000BC Ionians develop basic geometry, mathematics & astronomy.
Euclid
Plato
Aristotle
Etruscans
753 (21.4) Romulus & Remus found Rome.
550 (approx) Buddhism originated in India by Gautama.
479BC Confucius died
323 Death of Alexander the Great, aged 32, after conquoring most of the East.'Living God'. Major influence on Eastern & Western religions.
c300 Roman republic
221BC First united Chinese Empire under Qin Shi Huangdi.
Cleopatra
49 Roman republic becomes Empire under Julius Ceasar
44 Julius Caesar killed by Brutus
44-31 Triumpherate, Mark Antony. Octavius. Carassis rule empire.
43 BC Cicero, orator, writer + Statesman dies.
31 Gaius Octavius (Caesar Augustus - J.C. nephew) becomes Roman Emperor after defeating Mark Antony at Actium.

Potted History: 1900 to 2000ad

2007-12-05T03:14:00.000-08:00

1900 (30.11) Oscar Wilde dies in Paris
1901 (1.1) Australia becomes a Federation. Before each state was seperate colony.
1901 Marconi sends S from Newfoundland to Cornwal.
1901 (21.1) Death of Queen Victoria-accession of Edward vii
1901 Picasso's 1st exhibition in Paris.
1902 (July) 1st Tour de France
1903 Wright brothers fly
1904 Puccini's opera Madam Butterfly premieres in Milan.
1905 Einstein theory of relativity.
1911 End of Chinese Empire.
1910 Chanel opens salon in Rue Cambon.
1912 Titanic sinks.
1913 Apolphe Pegond jumps from aircraft at 200m & becomes 1st to successfully use parachute.
1914 WW1
Klimt
1916 1st battle of Somme. Lasted 5mths, 1million dead. Gained allies just 325 sq km.
1917 (oct) Tzar Nicholas of Russia executed.
1925 A.A. Milne writes Winnie-the-Pooh.
1928 Mickey Mouse debuts in Steamboat Willie.
1928 Philo Farnsworth invents electronic TV
1929 Stock market crash.
End of Raj in India?
1929 Arthur Ransome writes Swallows and Amazons
1930? George Orwell writes 1984.
1939-45 WW2
1941 Orson Welles directs Citizen Kane.
1941 (7.12) Pearl Harbor
1941 (11.12) Hitler declares war on USA.
1944 Allied forces liberate Paris after 4yrs of Nazi occupation.
1945 (7.8) U.S. drops atom bombs on Hiroshima - 117 000 casualties.
1945 (30.4) Adolf Hitler commits suicide.
1947 Christian Dior introduces the New Look.
1950s Eniac 1st computer.
1951 Catholic church permits discussion of evolutionalist principles.
1952 Coronation of Elizabeth 2nd
1952 Edmond Hilary climbs Everest.
1953 (25.12) Tangiwai disaster kills 151.
1954 Roger Bannister 1st under 4min mile.
1957 USSR launches Sputnic satellite.
1959? Louis de Bernieres born.
1961 Oral contraceptive becomes available in UK on national health.
1961 (12.4) Uri Gagarin in space.
1961 (13.8) Berlin Wall erected.
1963 (28.8) Martin Luther King gives 'I have a dream' speach.
1963 (23.11)JFK shot in Dallas.
1965 First large unit of U.S. troops arrive in Vietnam.
1967 Dr Christiaan Barnhard preforms first heart transplant.
1968 Apollo 8 is launched on its way to man's 1st orbit of the moon.
1969 Neil Armstrong on moon.
1971 Coco Chanel died (b19.10.1883 Saumur, France)
1972? Stanley Kubrick makes 2001
1973 (8.4) Picasso dies age 92.
1974 Nixon resigns after Watergate.
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes 1st female P.M. of Britian
Berlin wall falls.
1980 John Lennon murdered in New York.
1984 Labour Government under David Lange defeated Muldoon's National government.
1985 Rainbow Warrior bombed in Auckland harbour.
1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
1993 U.S.A. enters war in the Middle East.
1991 collapse of the Soviet Union - 11 of 12 former Republics proclaim birth of Commonwealth of Indep. States
1997 Britain hands over Hong Kong to the Chinese.
1999 (1.6) Estimated world popn. 6 billion.

Potted History: 1800 to 1900ad

2007-12-05T03:13:00.000-08:00

1800 Population of the world estimated at 1 billion.
1814 Napoleon exiled to Elba - Burboun reign restored.
1815 Napoleon defeated by British & Prussian forces at battle of Waterloo.
1818 (to 1848) Emily Bronte.
1819 Factory act passed in Britain - no children under 9, under 16 less than 12hrs per day in textile mills.
1821 Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile in St Helena.
Napolean III crowned.
1831 (27.12) Darwin sets sail on Beagle for 5years.
1837 Queen Victoria take throne. (1819-1901)
1840 The Treaty of Waitangi signed.
1840 Potato famine in Ireland begins (lasts through to 1851)
1840 Deportation of convicts to Australia officially ends. ?
1843 Hong Kong proclaimed a British crown colony.
1844 Samuel Morse sends message from Washington to Baltimore.
1846 Anesthetic 1st used in a Massachusetts Hospital.
1851 (12.8) Isaac Singer granted patent on his Sewing Machine.
1859 Darwin publishes 'Origins of the species'.
1860 Paris commune.
1861 - 1865 American civil war.
End of slavery in the USA.
1864 Waikato Wars
1865(26.5) end of U.S. Civil War.
1867 Alfred Nobel demonstrates dynamite in England
Louis Pastor.
1874 (b.30.11) - 1965 Winston Churchill
1877 Edison records + plays back sound.
1879 (1.1) Edison demonstrates light bulb.
1880 Ned Kelly is wounded & captured.
1881 (25.10) Pablo Picasso born in Malaga, Spain.
1887 (12.8) Edison makes 1st sound recording of 'Mary had a little lamb'.
William Morris
Liberty opens in London.
Bell conducts 1st successful telephone experiments.
Charles Worth goes to Paris.
1889 Eiffel Tower opened in Paris.
1893-7 Penny Farthing the rage.
1896 Marconi makes prototype radio

Potted History: 1000 to 1800ad

2007-12-05T03:07:00.000-08:00

Richard Lion Heart comes to Rule Britain (French)
1066 Battle of Hastings
1066-87 Rule of William the Conqueror
1076 Irnerius rediscovers the Roman Digest of Law in Bologne.
1086 Doomsday book compiled for William the Conqueror.
1098 after 5mth siege Antioch falls to Crusaders.
Ghengis Khan sweeps across Poland,Hungry defeating Europe's best.
1215 King John signs Magna Carta granting more liberty to his barons.
1314 Robert the Bruce crushes the English under Edward 11 at Battle of Bannockburn.
1347 The Black Death hits Europe. In less than 20 years 1/2 popn. of Europe dead.
1397 Medici start lending money internationally. Begins Italian Renaissance.
1429 English are defeated by French forces lead by Joan of Arc at seige of Orleans.
1450s Guttenburg develops 1st printing press.
? First books printed in English by Caxton.
1490s? Leonardo di Vinci
Templars stamped out by the French
1492 Columbus discovers the Americas
1509 Henry 8th ascends the throne.
Catherine of Aragon(d1536) - Mary1
Anne Bolyne(ex1536) -Elizabeth1
Jane Seymour(d1537) - Edward.vi
Anne of Cleves (d1557)
Catherine Howard (ex1542)
Catherine Parr (d 1548)
1514 Copernia proposes that the earth rotates around the sun.
1515? Luther nails list on church door
1527? Death of Machiavelli.
1531 Henry 8th breaks from Rome to form Church of England.
1533 Atahualpa, king of the Inca, executed by Pizarro, after paying ransom of 1 room gold + 2 of silver
1547 Death of Henry 8th (b1509)
1547 Edward vi takes throne (1537-53)
1553 Rule of 'Bloody' Queen Mary i. (1516-58)
1558 Elizabeth i. reign. (1533-1603)
1564 (21.4) Shakespeare born
1566 French astrologer, physician & prophet Nostradamus dies.
1587 Mary Queen of Scots beheaded
1558 (23.7) British forces assemble to combat the Spanish Armarda.
1591 Galileo takes up of Prof. of Mathematics of Padua.
1603 James i (vi Scotland) takes crown. (1566-1625)
1611 Henry Hudson, famous for trying to find Asian route via Arctic, set adrift in Hudson bay by mutineers.
1613 The Globe Theatre burns down.
1616 (18.4) Death of Shakespeare (51yrs)
1619 First Africans brought to America by Dutch, the beginning of slavery.
1620 (21.12) Pilgrims go ashore from the Mayflgwer at Plymouth.
1625 Charles i. to throne. (1600-beheaded 1649)
1644 Cromwell's forces defeat British royalists..
1649 Charles ii.-restored 1660. (1630- 85)
1653 (16.12) Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England Scotland + Ireland.
?Reformation in England.
1666 Fire of London.
1688 William + Mary offered joint monarchy over England + Holland.
1687 Isaac Newton publishes Principia Mathematica, 20 years after apple.
The Mayflower
1720s onward - good weather in Eng. for 30yrs.=popn. increase + slave trade money +.technology = industrial revolution.
1753 Benjamin Franklin flew kite to prove lightning was electricity.
1759 m2 chronometer perfected
1765 Watt patents steam engine
1767 James Hargreaves invents spinning jenny.
1769 Cook 'discovers' New Zealand
American Declaration of Independence.
1769? Napolean Bonaparte born in Corsica.
1773 (16.12) American colonists stage Boston Tea Party.
1775-1817 Jane Austen.
1780s? Alessandro Volta produces 1st battery in Italy.
1789 (14.7)The storming of the Bastille marks the start of the French revolution.
1789 George Washington inaugurated,
1792 (30.11) British & Americans sign peace articles in Paris ending American Revolution.
1799? Napoleonic era
Victory in northern Italy , Austria
Victory (?) in Egypt.
French lose almost entire navy to English near Alexandria.
Napoleon named 1st consul
Crowned as Emperor.